We show that bank branching tends to mitigate localized market power by broadening the geographic scope of competition among banks, even though branch banking allows banks to differentiate themselves through their choices of branch locations. Banking services at peripheral locations will be...

Until the end of 1977, the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) for rents tended to omit rent increases when units had a change of tenants or were vacant, biasing inflation estimates downward. Beginning in 1978, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) implemented a series of methodological changes that...

We amend the standard cost model to account for the role of financial capital in banking. The cost function is conditioned on the level of capital, but we model the demand for financial capital so that it can serve as a cushion against insolvency for potentially risk-averse managers and as a...