Book excerpt: More than 500 thrift institutions were liquidated or merged by the regulatory authorities during the first half of the 1980s and hundreds more await similar action. Since such closures are frequently costly, it is important to assess not only the likelihood that an institution will fail, but also its likely cost, upon failure, to the insurance fund. This paper, therefore, focuses on the determinants of the cost of failure so as to assess the riskiness to the insurance agency of various activities that have recently come under increased regulatory control as well as to examine the importance of timeliness in closing insolvent institutions. It further examines the relationship between alternative book-value measures of net worth and the cost of failure.