The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was created in 1933. Today, the FDIC’s presence and monitoring ensures that banks are and remain solvent. Although the FDIC does everything in its power to prevent a bank from failing, bank failure can still occur, even in times of relative economic stability. Using a Probit regression analysis, this study assesses the probability of bank failure by looking at 102 different banks, eight different financial variables, and six geographic region variables during the time periods of 1998–1999 and 2001–2002. The geographic location variable is used to investigate if failures occur more often in certain regions of the country or in more urban or rural areas. In the end, none of the financial variables were statistically significant, whereas the regional geographic variables were. This suggests that during a period of relative economic stability, regional economic conditions affect bank failures more so than financial variables.
The author has given permission for this work to be deposited in the Digital Archive of Colorado College.
Includes bibliographical references.
Colorado College Honor Code upheld.
The author has given permission for this work to be deposited in the Digital Archive of Colorado College.
Colorado College Honor Code upheld.
