This short essay deals with universal banking in an environment in which a government safety net (for example deposit insurance) results in a moral hazard problem for banks. It argues that universal banking significantly exacerbates the problem. Specifically, universal banking extends the distortion of incentives caused by moral hazard to other sectors of the economy.

While the policy of too-big-to-fail has received wide attention in the literature, there is little agreement regarding economies of scale for financial firms. We take the stand that systemic risk increases when the larger players in the financial sector have a larger share of output. Calculations indicate that the cost to the macro-economy due to increased systemic risk is always much larger than the potential benefit due to scale economies. When distributional and intergenerational issues are considered, the potential benefits to economies of scale are unlikely to ever exceed the potential costs due to increased risk of a banking crisis.

An important issue in the debate over whether bank holding companies (BHCs) should be permitted to enter nonbanking activities is the effect of expanded nonbanking powers on BHC risk. We test this issue empirically by simulating mergers between BHCs and firms in nonbanking financial industries, calculating risk measures for the hypothetical merged firms, and comparing their risk characteristics with those of actual unmerged BHCs. We find that mergers of BHCs with life insurance or property/casualty insurance firms may reduce risk, but that mergers of BHCs with securities firms or real estate firms would likely increase risk.