Economic theory predicts that reciprocal brokered deposits, by enhancing deposit insurance coverage, may reduce market discipline for banks, permitting them to take more risk in various dimensions. A newly available dataset provides empirical evidence related to that hypothesis.

Motivated by the debate over similarities between the current and previous financial crises, logit estimates reveal significantly changed linkages between observable financial ratios and probabilities of subsequent bank failure using US data from the 1980s and 2008.

Contests often involve players vying for the same prize year after year. This paper characterizes equilibrium effort, both individual and aggregate, in a general parameterization of such repeated contests.