This paper demonstrates that the risk sensitivity of a banking organization's subordinated debt yield spreads may understate the potential for market discipline in some periods and overstate in others because such spreads contain liquidity premiums that are driven, in part, by the...

We find that the risk-sensitivity of bank holding company subordinated debt spreads at issuance increased with regulatory reforms that were designed to reduce conjectural government guarantees, but declined somewhat with subsequent reforms that were aimed in part at reducing regulatory...

Because illiquid bonds may be relatively poorly priced, the ability to infer investor perceptions of changes in a banking organization's financial health from such bonds may be obscured. To examine the time-series effect of trading frequency on subordinated debt spreads, we consider the...

We investigate how banking market competition, informational opacity, and sensitivity to shocks have changed over the last three decades by examining the persistence of firm-level rents. We develop propagation mechanisms with testable implications to isolate the sources of persistence. Our...

We provide evidence that a bank's subordinated debt yield spread is not, by itself, a sufficient measure of default risk. We use a model in which subordinated debt is held by investors with superior knowledge ("informed investor hypothesis"). First, we show that in theory the yield spread on...

We consider the business strategy of some banks that provide relationship loans (where they have loan origination and monitoring advantages relative to capital markets) with core deposit funding (where they can pass along the benefit of a sticky price on deposits). These "traditional banks" tend...

Basel II bank capital regulations are designed to be substantially more risk sensitive than the current regulations. In the United States, only the largest banks would be required to adopt Basel II; other depositories could choose to adopt such standards or to remain under the Basel I capital...

The primary mission of the 12 cooperatively owned Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) is to provide their members financial products and services to assist and enhance member housing finance. In this paper, we consider the role of the FHLBs' traditional product--"advances," or collateralized loans...

We conduct an empirical analysis of the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs) on MBS yields and mortgage rates. The Federal Reserve's accumulation of MBS and Treasury securities lowered MBS yields and mortgage rates by more than what would have been suggested by changes in market...