The recent global financial crisis has highlighted the importance of the procyclicality of the financial sector. The procyclicality has transformed banks from mitigation mechanisms to amplifiers of changes in economic activity, potentially affecting financial stability and economic growth. The...

To calculate regulatory capital ratios, banks have to apply adjustments to book equity. These regulatory adjustments vary with a bank’s solvency position. Low-solvency banks report values of Tier 1 capital that exceed book equity. They use regulatory adjustments to inflate regulatory solvency...

The basics of full reserve (FR) banking are set out below, followed by thirty eight flawed arguments against, and four flawed arguments for full reserve (also known as “100% reserve”). Each argument set out below has: 1. A heading (which also appears in the table of contents below). 2. Where...

Section 1 of this work argues the case for full reserve banking. Section 2 explains the flaws in a large number of arguments put AGAINST full reserve, and section 3 explains the flaws in a few arguments put IN FAVOUR of full reserve.

This study employs various bootstrapped Malmquist indices and efficiency scores to investigate the effects of government regulation on the performance of the Iranian banking industry over the period 2003-2008. An alternative decomposition of the Malmquist index, introduced by Simar and Wilson...

The empowerment of the poor through cell phones is this paper’s central theme. There already exist a number of cases in the world where such empowerment has already occurred in the financial sector through the usage of cell phones: the cases provided throughout the paper are Kenya, the...

This study evaluates the cost and the profit efficiency of Italian banking sector over the period 2006-2011. Translog stochastic frontiers are used for this purpose. Following the intermediation approach, efficiency scores are computed from estimating a model with three inputs and three outputs....

In the lead-up to the implementation of Basel III, European banks bought back debt securities that traded at a discount. Banks engaged in these Liability Management Exercises (LMEs) to realize a fair value gain that the accounting and prudential rules exclude from regulatory capital...

Microfinance across the globe is being practiced as a tool to mitigate poverty and chiefly as an empowerment tool to uplift the downtrodden. The paper has uniquely established that Self Help Groups in India have been significantly successful in achieving the objective of economic development of...

In the context of the financial crisis, many projects of bank levies have emerged. Yet, there is very little evidence on the incidence of bank taxes and, hence, it is not clear who will bear the burden of the new taxes. In this paper, we investigate the ability of banks to shift corporate income...