We document that natural disasters significantly weaken the stability of banks with business activities in affected regions. This is reflected, among others, in higher probabilities of default and foreclosure ratios. The effects are economically relevant and suggest that insurance payments and...

This study analyzes if regionally affiliated Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members take their districts’ regional banking sector instability into account when they vote. Considering the period 1978–2010, we find that a deterioration in a district’s bank health increases the...

Why do some banks react to deregulation by expanding geographically while others do not? This paper examines this question using exogenous variation in locally non-diversifiable risk that banks face in their home state. As a measure of locally non-diversifiable risk we use data on damages...