Research Database

This article describes changes in the number of average weekly hours of market work per person in the United States since World War II. Overall, this number has been roughly constant; for various groups, however, it has shifted dramatically—from males to females, from older people to younger people, and from single- to married-person households. The article provides a unique look at how the lifetime pattern of work hours has changed since 1950 for different demographic groups. The article also documents several factors that may be related to the changes in hours worked: simultaneous changes in Social Security benefits, fertility rates, and family structure. The data presented are based on those collected by the U.S. Bureau of the Census during the 1950–90 decennial censuses.

This article develops a model which shows that bank deposit contracts can provide allocations superior to those of exchange markets, offering an explanation of how banks subject to runs can attract deposits. Investors face privately observed risks which lead to a demand for liquidity. Traditional demand deposit contracts which provide liquidity have multiple equilibria, one of which is a bank run. Bank runs in the model cause real economic damage, rather than simply reflecting other problems. Contracts which can prevent runs are studied, and the analysis shows that there are circumstances when government provision of deposit insurance can produce superior contracts.

This article argues that the poor performance of the U.S. banking industry in the 1980s was due mainly to the risk-taking of the largest banks, which was encouraged by the U.S. government's too-big-to-fail policy. The article documents the recent trend toward riskier bank portfolios and the corresponding decline in bank profitability. A breakdown of the data by location and by asset size reveals that bank problems were concentrated in areas with troubled industries (oil, real estate, and agriculture) and among banks with the largest assets. In a statistical study controlling for location, asset size remains a significant factor in bank performance. The article concludes with a rough quantitative estimate of the cost to the industry of the poor performance of large banks.