The future of bank overdraft fees
Bank overdraft fees have been on the rise for many years as income volatility rises and more Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. Federal bank regulators have done little to help American families, failing to speed up America’s payment system to address one of the many root causes of overdrafts (slow deposit times) while giving a thumbs up to banks who choose to increase profits at the expense of those living on the financial edge. A few banks and financial technology firms are choosing a different path, creating new products designed to help consumers avoid overdraft, attacking the problem of why it is so expensive to be poor.
Join Brookings as we engage in an in-depth conversation with these banks, financial technology firms, and consumer advocates to explore alternatives to overdraft. We will analyze whether new technology and products can meet people’s needs for financial flexibility in a more fair and efficient manner. To facilitate this discussion we will premier a new format to engage industry and consumer voices in this provocative conversation.
Viewers can submit questions for speakers by emailing events@brookings.edu or via Twitter using #Overdraft.
Distrust or speculation? the socioeconomic drivers of U.S. cryptocurrency investments
Employing representative data from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, we disprove the hypothesis that cryptocurrency investors are motivatedby distrust in fiat currencies or regulated finance. Compared with the general population, investors show no differences in their level of security concerns with either cash or commercial banking services. We find that cryptocurrency investors tend to be educated, young and digital natives. In recent years, a gap in ownership of cryptocurrencies across genders has emerged. We examine how investor characteristics vary across cryptocurrencies and show that owners of cryptocurrencies increasingly tend to hold their investment for longer periods.
Distrust or speculation? the socioeconomic drivers of U.S. cryptocurrency investments
Bank for International Settlements BIS Working Papers by Raphael Auer and David Tercero-Lucas
Passive funds affect prices: evidence from the most ETF-dominated asset classes
Bank for International Settlements BIS Working Papers by Karamfil Todorov
Limits of stress-test based bank regulation
Bank for International Settlements BIS Working Papers by Tirupam Goel and Isha Agarwal
The Effects of Government Licensing on E-commerce: Evidence from Alibaba
Bank of Canada Working Papers by Ginger Zhe Jin, Zhentong Lu, Xiaolu Zhou and Chunxiao Li
China's Long-Term Growth Potential: Can Productivity Convergence Be Sustained?
Bank of Japan Working Papers by Takatoshi Sasaki, Tomoya Sakata, Yui Mukoyama and Koichi Yoshino
Annual Economic Report 2021
The BIS describes how the strong policy response to Covid-19 delivered a faster than expected economic rebound, but notes that the uneven recovery creates daunting challenges for policymakers. The report also addresses rising income and wealth inequality, and lays out design choices for central bank digital currencies.
Annual Report 2020/21
The BIS Annual Report explains what we do and who we are as an institution. You can find a description of our activities, governance and organisation, together with our annual financial statements for 2020/21.
Report of the Task Force on Financial Stability
Following the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09, the U.S. and other economies shored up the resilience of their banks through more demanding capital and liquidity requirements and rigorous stress testing. The disruptions of financial markets at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 underscored the vulnerabilities of markets and institutions that comprise the important—and growing—nonbank sector of the financial system through which much credit to businesses, households, and government flows.
The Task Force on Financial Stability was formed before the pandemic, in October 2019, by the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution and the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Its mission was to identify gaps in the regulatory architecture and other features of the financial system (outside the regulated banking sector) that make it insufficiently resilient, and to recommend mitigating policies to regulators, Congress, and the industry.
The report focuses on the U.S. Treasury market, open-end mutual funds, housing finance, derivatives clearinghouses, and life insurance companies; it also makes recommendations for the structure and process of regulation, including the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the Office of Financial Research, both created by the Dodd-Frank Act, to increase the likelihood of spotting and addressing issues that will arise in the future.
The Task Force was chaired by Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and Don Kohn of the Hutchins Center at Brookings. Other members were Laurie Goodman, Urban Institute; Kathryn Judge, Columbia Law School; Anil Kashyap, Chicago Booth; Ralph Koijen, Chicago Booth; Blythe Masters, Motive Capital; Sandie O’Connor, independent; and Kara Stein, University of Pennsylvania and University of California law schools.
Read the full report here.
Related Content