We construct theory-based measures of systemic bank shocks. These measures complement banking crisis indicators employed in many empirical studies, which we show capture (lagged) policy responses to systemic bank shocks. To illustrate the importance of disentangling shocks and policy responses...

The last decade has witnessed a great deal of theoretical and empirical research on the relationships between inflation, financial market performance, and economic growth. This paper provides a survey of that literature and presents new cross-country empirical results on this topic. We find that...

We study a banking model in which banks invest in a riskless asset and compete in both deposit and risky loan markets. The model predicts that as competition increases, both loans and assets increase; however, the effect on the loans-to-assets ratio is ambiguous. Similarly, as competition...

Many empirical studies of banking crises have employed ""banking crisis"" (BC) indicators constructedusing primarily information on government actions undertaken in response to bank distress. Weformulate a simple theoretical model of a banking industry which we use to identify and...

This paper pinpoints sources of recent problems in U.S. commercial banking. The objective is to provide a context for evaluating policy options. There are three parts. The first documents how increased competition and financial innovation made banking less stable in the 1980s. The second part...