A central issue currently debated among bank analysts and economists is whether mergers enhance the efficiency of surviving banks. This paper investigates the postmerger performance of acquiring banks that participated in a merger during 1980-90. The evidence suggests that acquiring banks failed...

Prepayment plays a critical role in the performance of mortgage-backed securities. For this reason, market participants have devoted substantial resources to developing formal mathematical models of mortgage prepayment. Despite their considerable efforts, however, the forecasting effectiveness...

We hypothesize that the intrinsic benefit required to trigger a refinancing has become smaller, due to a combination of technological, regulatory, and structural changes that have made mortgage origination more competitive and more efficient. To test this hypothesis, we estimate an empirical...

We hypothesize that the intrinsic benefit required to trigger a refinancing has become smaller, due to a combination of technological, regulatory, and structural changes that have made mortgage origination more competitive and more efficient and have raised financial awareness of homeowners. To...

A central issue currently debated among bank analysts and economists is whether mergers enhance the efficiency of surviving banks. This paper investigates the postmerger performance of acquiring banks that participated in a merger during the period 1980-90. The evidence suggests that acquirers...

The current review of the 1988 Basel Capital Accord has put the spotlight on the ratios used to assess banks’ capital adequacy. This article examines the effectiveness of three capital ratios—the first based on leverage, the second on gross revenues, and the third on risk-weighted...

A deterioration in the link between the M2 monetary aggregate and GDP, along with large errors in predicting M2 growth, led the Board of Governors to downgrade the M2 aggregate as a reliable indicator of monetary policy in 1993. In this paper, we argue that the financial condition of depository...