The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

AFA members can log in to view full-text articles below.

View past issues


Search the Journal of Finance:






Search results: 1.

Banks as Liquidity Providers: An Explanation for the Coexistence of Lending and Deposit‐taking

Published: 12/17/2002   |   DOI: 10.1111/1540-6261.00415

Anil K. Kashyap, Raghuram Rajan, Jeremy C. Stein

What ties together the traditional commercial banking activities of deposit‐taking and lending? We argue that since banks often lend via commitments, their lending and deposit‐taking may be two manifestations of one primitive function: the provision of liquidity on demand. There will be synergies between the two activities to the extent that both require banks to hold large balances of liquid assets: If deposit withdrawals and commitment takedowns are imperfectly correlated, the two activities can share the costs of the liquid‐asset stockpile. We develop this idea with a simple model, and use a variety of data to test the model empirically.