In this paper, we examine how the value of failed bank assets differs between two types of FDIC resolution methods: liquidation and private-sector reorganization. Our findings show that private-sector reorganizations do not deliver the expected cost-savings from 1986 to 1991, a period of industry distress. On a univariate basis, the net loss on assets is lower for a private-sector reorganization than for a liquidation in both a period of industry distress and of industry health. However, institutions with higher quality assets and higher franchise values are more likely to be resolved using a private-sector resolution. Once we control for this selection bias, we find that institutions that are resolved during periods of industry distress result in higher resolution costs than liquidation. During periods of industry health, private-sector resolutions are less costly than liquidations. We show that if a bank that failed during the post-crisis period instead failed during the crisis period, its net loss as a percent of assets would have been 3.232 percentage points higher. Given that the average net loss on assets ratio is 21.42 percent during our sample period from 1986 to 2007, the increase in costs is economically significant.

The regulatory dialectic describes the dynamic process of banks and regulators continuously acting and reacting to one another. We provide empirical evidence of the regulatory dialectic in the prime institutional money market fund (PI-MMF) industry. Regulations on commercial deposits fueled growth in bank-sponsored PI-MMFs as a form of shadow banking in a relatively less regulated market. Re-regulation following the 2008 financial crisis halted this rapid growth, and the industry shifted from PI-MMFs to government institutional MMFs. We conjecture that this dialectical process will continue, and the decline of the PI-MMF may engender a shift toward structurally similar products, like stablecoins.