Interest-bearing checking policies at single-market banks, 2008-2012

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze interest-bearing checking (IC) account policies, including the monthly fee, and minima to avoid the fee or to earn interest, as shrouded equilibria in the sense that low-income depositors subsidize higher income depositors. The authors ask whether behavior is consistent with low-income depositors being myopic, and analyze the role of competition and bank size. Design/methodology/approach – IC policy data from RateWatch cover more than 600 single-market banks from 2008-2012, and are matched to FDIC SOD data and call report data for testing. Hypotheses assuming low-income depositors are myopic are tested, as are the effects of bank size and competition with local market and multi-market banks. Findings – IC policies represent locally shrouded equilibria, with low-income depositors subsidizing higher income depositors up to a well-defined threshold, with depositors above that threshold subsiding all other customers. IC policy patterns are consistent with low-...