The Great Depression was the worst macroeconomic collapse in U.S. history. Sharp declines in household income and real estate values resulted in soaring mortgage delinquency rates. According to one estimate, as of January 1, 1934, fully one-half of U.S. home mortgages were delinquent and, on...

This paper examines the association between monetary policy and stock market booms and busts in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany during the 20th century. Booms tended to arise when output growth was rapid and inflation was low, and end within a few months of an increase in...

This paper examines the technical efficiency of U.S. Federal Reserve check processing offices over 1980-2003. We extend results from Park et al. (2000) and Daouia and Simar (2007) to develop an unconditional, hyperbolic, amp;#945;-quantile estimator of efficiency. Our new estimator is fully...

This paper studies the macroeconomic conditions and policy environments under which stock market booms occurred among ten developed countries during the 20th Century. We find that booms tended to occur during periods of above-average growth of real output, and below-average and falling...

Advances in information-processing technology have significantly eroded the advantages of small scale and proximity to customers that traditionally enabled community banks and other small-scale lenders to thrive. Nonetheless, U.S. credit unions have experienced increasing membership and market...

The Federal tax code creates challenges for comparing the profit rates of different banks on a consistent basis. The earnings of banks that elect to operate under Subchapter S of the Federal tax code are not subject to the Federal corporate income tax, but S-bank shareholders are taxed on their...

It is often argued that branching stabilizes banking systems by facilitating diversification of bank portfolios; however, previous empirical research on the Great Depression offers mixed support for this view. Analyses using state-level data find that states allowing branch banking had lower...

It is widely argued in the literature on the Great Depression that the prevalence of unit banks aggravated the problem of financial instability that afflicted the country. This paper tests the theory that more widespread branch banking would have reduced financial turbulence in the United States...

The 1950s are often cited as a decade in which the Federal Reserve operated a particularly successful monetary policy. The present paper examines the evolution of Federal Reserve monetary policy from the mid-1930s through the 1950s in an effort to understand better the apparent success of policy...

The 1950s are often pointed to as a decade in which the Federal Reserve operated a particularly successful monetary policy. The present paper examines the evolution of Federal Reserve monetary policy from the mid-1930s through the 1950s in an effort to understand better the apparent success of...