Individual banks differ substantially in their foreign operations. This paper introduces heterogeneous banks into a general equilibrium framework of banking across borders to explain the documented variation. While the model matches existing micro and macro evidence, novel and unexplored...

Using a novel database containing the time-series details of the organizational structure of individual bank holding companies, this paper presents the first population-wide study of the transformation in business scope of U.S. banks. Expanding scope has a negative impact on performance on...

The subprime crisis highlights how little we know about the governance of banks. This paper addresses a long-standing gap in the literature by analyzing board governance using a sample of banking firm data that spans forty years. We examine the relationship between board structure (size and...

We construct a new systemic risk measure that quantifies vulnerability to fire-sale spillovers using detailed regulatory balance sheet data for U.S. commercial banks and repo market data for broker-dealers. Even for moderate shocks in normal times, fire-sale externalities can be substantial. For...

We explore the capital structure and governance of a mortgage-insuring securitization utility operating with government reinsurance for systemic or 'tail' risk. The structure we propose for the replacement of the GSEs focuses on aligning incentives for appropriate pricing and transfer of...

A 2012 paper by Goodhart, Kashyap, Tsomocos, and Vardoulakis (GKTV) proposes a dynamic general equilibrium framework that provides a conceptual - and to some extent quantitative - framework for the analysis of macroprudential policies. The distinguishing feature of GKTV's paper relative to any...

Many large U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) continued to pay dividends during the recent financial crisis, even as financial market conditions deteriorated, large losses accumulated, and emergency capital and liquidity were being provided by the official sector. In contrast, share repurchases...

This paper investigates the incentives for banks to bias their internally generated risk estimates. We are able to estimate bank biases at the credit level by comparing bank-generated risk estimates within loan syndicates. The biases are positively correlated with measures of regulatory capital,...

The Federal Reserve is responsible for the prudential supervision of bank holding companies (BHCs) on a consolidated basis. Prudential supervision involves monitoring and oversight to assess whether these firms are engaged in unsafe or unsound practices, as well as ensuring that firms are taking...

Drawing on a large sample of publicly available curricula vitae, this paper traces the career transitions of federal and state U.S. banking regulators and provides basic facts on worker flows between the regulatory and private sectors resulting from the revolving door. We find strong...