The article is organized as follows: Section I briefly describes the features of various types of reverse mortgages offered in the private and public sectors. Section II surveys the ~elevant literature that has focused on the savings patterns of the elderly and their demand for reverse mortgage...

Current methods of failed bank resolution are unnecessarily expensive for taxpayers and impose substantial costs on borrowers at failed banks. This situation is due to distorted incentives imbedded in the standard contract between the government and acquirers of failed banks, which result in...

In testimony on February 3, 1992 before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the United States Senate, Richard F. Syron, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, proposed a mechanism to help relieve current credit availability problems by making existing FDIC...

Interest in foreign investment has been high among U.S. investors in recent years. Many investors know that geographic diversification can improve investment returns without increasing risk. However, whether or not to invest abroad and, if so, how much weight to give to foreign investment, are...

New England banks are currently suffering from problems similar to those that caused the demise of many Texas banks. In both cases, a boom in the real-estate sector was followed by a sharp contraction caused by weakness in the leading sectors of the economy. In both cases, banks had greatly...

In the aftermath of the real estate slump and the attendant financial troubles of the New England banks, it is natural to look for causes and contributing factors. One phenomenon that has received its share of the blame is the rush of conversions by thrifts in the mid 1980s from mutual to stock...

The authors analyze the effect of bank mergers on deposit interest rates, using data on banks responding to the Federal Reserve's Monthly Survey of Selected Deposits over an 11-year period. Their results suggest that banks exercise market power in pricing money market deposits and CD's in their...

Bank participation in derivative markets has risen sharply in recent years. The total amount of interest rate, currency, commodity, and equity contracts at U.S. commercial and savings banks soared from $6.8 trillion in 1990 to $11.9 trillion in 1993, an increase of 75 percent. A major concern...

In the present climate of intense debate over deposit insurance reform, the nature and limits of market discipline become especially important. The widely accepted argument for greater reliance on market discipline is that it will restrain managerial risk-taking and reduce potential losses to...