This paper examines the effects of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's (RFC) loan and preferred stock programs on bank failure rates in Michigan during the period 1932-1934, which includes the important Michigan banking crisis of early 1933 and its aftermath. Using a new database on...

This paper takes a unique approach to study the relationship between bank capital and Too-Big-To-Fail (TBTF) during the Financial Crisis. A structural credit risk model is used to compute implied market value capital ratios which, when compared to traditional risk-based capital, illustrates the...

The failure of Lehman Brothers highlighted the severe lapses in risk management and regulatory oversight that brought on and intensified the global financial crisis. This paper presents a structural credit risk model that provides useful early warning signals that regulators could have used to...

Our estimates treat the receipt of RFC assistance as an endogenous variable. We are able to identify apparently valid and powerful instruments (predictors of RFC assistance that are not directly related to failure risk) for analyzing the effects of RFC assistance on bank survival. We find that...