Financial Institutions

This article provides the first comprehensive econometric analysis of the causes of bank distress during the Depression. We assemble bank-level data for virtually all Fed member banks, and combine those data with county-level, state-level, and national-level economic characteristics to capture cross-sectional and inter-temporal variation in the determinants of bank failure.

This paper examines the effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on the international location decisions of U.S. financial services firms. The Act included rule changes that made it substantially more difficult for U.S. firms to defer U.S. taxes on overseas financial services income held in low-tax jurisdictions. We use information from the tax returns of U.S. corporations to examine how local taxes affect the allocation of financial assets held abroad by financial services firms.

Numerous studies have documented that stock returns are negatively related to changes in interest rates, but there has been little corroborating research on the information in interest rate changes about the fundamentals that the stock market prices. The negative correlation is often attributed to changes in the discount rate, a denominator effect in a valuation model. However, there may also be a numerator effect on the expected payoffs that are discounted.

This paper analyzes the issue costs and initial pricing of bonds in the international market. In particular, we investigate the determinants of three components of issue costs: underwriter fee, underwriter spread (the difference between the offering price and the guaranteed price to the issuer), and underpricing (the difference between the market price and the offering price). Total underwriter compensation increases with the bonds’ credit risk and maturity, but it is insignificantly related to issue size.

Something is wrong with the global financial system. One might think the system would shift money from rich countries, where capital is in abundance, to those where it is scarce, while transferring risk from poor countries to rich ones, which are most able to bear it. A well-functioning global financial system would provide money to countries in their times of need, thereby contributing to global economic stability.

It is not easy to summarize Ned Phelps's monumental contribution to economics.