Deposit insurance, while reducing the threat of bank runs, also lessens bankers’ incentives to control risks. Reforms of the deposit insurance system are necessary to discourage excessive risk taking such as characterized the recent S&L crisis. The adoption of market value accounting, early...

The policy of too big to fail arose in part from pressures created by the lack of satisfactory bankruptcy arrangements for banks. It prevented market forces from closing banks and protected all uninsured depositors of large banks from loss in the event of failure. The consequent risk-taking...

This paper studies a banking industry subject to common and idiosyncratic shocks. We compare two types of regulatory closure rules: (1) an “absolute closure rule,” which closes banks when their asset–liability ratios fall below a given threshold, and (2) a “relative closure rule,”...