Frequent, yet uninformed, market timing recommendations by a financial advisory firm generate significant flows for Chilean pension funds. These flows induce substantial changes in the Chilean foreign exchange rate due to the funds’ high allocation to international securities. Local banks provide liquidity to pension funds in the spot market and their hedging transactions propagate the demand fluctuations from the spot to the forward market. This results in deviations from covered interest rate parity. Using bank balance sheet data, we confirm that banks’ risk bearing constraints create limits to arbitrage.
I use the introduction of deposit insurance in eight U.S. states in the early twentieth-century to study the effects of deposit insurance on the banking system. Using a triple difference approach exploiting regulatory differences between national and state banks and between states, I find that insured banks experienced higher deposit growth and decreased funding costs. I also observe a replacement of demand deposits by riskier time deposits. However, I find no aggregate effects on failure rates or risk-taking. Using hand-collected micro-level data, I show that small and large banks reacted differently and that banks facing funding problems especially benefited.