In this paper we use credit rating data from two Swedish banks to elicit evidence on these banks' loan monitoring ability. We do so by comparing the ability of bank ratings to predict loan defaults relative to that of public ratings from the Swedish credit bureau. We test the banks' abilility to...

The authors provide evidence that transactions accounts help financial intermediaries monitor borrowers by offering lenders a continuous stream of data on borrowers' account balances. This information is most readily available to commercial banks, but other intermediaries, such as finance...

Recent papers have questioned the accuracy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' methodology for measuring rent increases and changes in implicit rents for owner-occupied housing. We compare the BLS estimates of increases in rents and owner-occupied housing costs to regression-based estimates using...

Until the end of 1977, the method used in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) to measure rent inflation tended to omit rent increases when units had a change of tenants or were vacant. Since such units typically had more rapid increases in rents than average units, this response bias biased...

From 1900 to 1935, Argentina evolved from an economy highly dependent on external, primarily British, finance to one more nearly self-sufficient. The authors examine the failure of domestic finance to adequately fill the void left by the decline of London and the breakdown of the world financial...

Do checking accounts help banks monitor borrowers? If they do, the rationale both for allowing regulated providers of liquidity to also make risky loans to commercial borrowers and for the government's providing deposit insurance becomes clearer. Using a unique set of data that includes monthly...

We show that bank branching tends to mitigate localized market power by broadening the geographic scope of competition among banks. Banking services at peripheral locations will be priced more competitively when those locales are served by branch networks. We develop a theoretical model in...