Go to the St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED database and find data on the number of commercial banks in the United States in each of the following categories:

• average assets less than $100 million (US100NUM).
  • https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/US100NUMLinks to an external site.
• average assets greater than $15 billion (USG15NUM).
  • https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USG15NUMLinks to an external site.
• Total number of commercial banks.
  • https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USNUMLinks to an external site.

Download the data into a spreadsheet.

(a) Calculate the percentage of banks in the smallest (less than $100 million) and largest (greater than $15 billion) categories, as a percentage of the total number of banks, for 1990:Q1, 2000:Q1, 2010:Q1, 2020:Q1.

[USE ONE DECIMAL PLACE WHERE NEEDED]

	# Very Small	Proportion Very Small [as %]	# Very Large	Proportion Very Large [as %]
1990 Q1
2000 Q1
2010 Q1
2020 Q1

(b) What has happened to the proportion of very large banks? (increase/decrease)

(c) What has happened to the proportion of very small banks? (increase/decrease)

(d) What does this say about the "too-big-to-fail" problem?

• The "Too Big to Fail" problem has (increased/decreased) .
• This implies that there is an (increase/decrease) in (moral hazard/adverse selection) in the banking system.