How Depositors Discipline Banks: A Micro-level Case Study of Hamilton Bank

The authors would like to thank Dennis Clague and Ross Dierdorff for their substantial efforts in transforming raw account data into estimates of insured and uninsured deposits suitable for analysis. We also thank Lynn Shibut for recognizing the potential analytical value of this unique pre-failure account-level data. We are grateful for the insights on bank closings in general and Hamilton in particular provided by Kathleen Halpin and Robert Scheppe. We thank Lynn Shibut, Ross Dierdorff, and John O’Keefe for their helpful comments and sharing their considerable expertise. We also benefited from participant comments from the 2004 Western Economic Association International conference. We appreciate the exemplary research assistance provided by Doug Akers, Christine Brickman, Caroline Crider, Sarah Kroeger and Aja McGhee. Any remaining errors are our own. * * This paper represents preliminary research, please do not cite without permission. Comments welcome and can be directed to the corresponding author. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. DRAFT