The intent of fair lending regulation is to encourage loans in low income areas and insure that loan decisions are based on economic criteria instead of noneconomic borrower characteristics. We evaluate situations in which banks may find it in their self interest to respond to regulation in a...

Deregulation of geographic restrictions in banking over the past 20 years has intensified both potential and actual competition in the industry. The accumulating empirical evidence suggests that potential efficiency gains associated with consolidating banks are often not realized. We evaluate...

Several recent studies have recommended greater reliance on subordinated debt as a tool to discipline bank risk taking. Some of these proposals recommend using sub-debt yield spreads as triggers for supervisory discipline under prompt corrective action (PCA). Currently such action is prompted by...

Anecdotal evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) influences the lending behavior of financial institutions has not been uniformly supported by empirical research. We revisit this issue by evaluating changes in low-income mortgage lending at commercial banks over the 1992-96 period....

Acquisitions of industrial loan corporations by commercial firms have renewed the debate over the separation between banking and commerce in the U.S. On May 16–18, 2007, policymakers and academics weighed in on this debate during the Chicago Fed’s 43rd annual Conference on Bank Structure and...