Cross-border consolidation of financial institutions within Europe has been relatively limited, possibly reflecting efficiency barriers to operating across borders, including distance; differences in language, culture, currency, and regulatory/supervisory structures; and explicit or implicit rules...

The passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act sparked discussion of creating a systematic code that uniquely identifies an entity. This code is commonly referred to as a legal entity identifier (LEI). The information that is collected to accompany and describe the...

We examine the efficiency effects of the integration of the financial services industry and suggest directions for future research. We also propose a relatively broad working definition of integration and employ U.S. and European data on financial service industry M&As to illustrate several...

Evidence is reviewed suggesting that: (a) in market economies financial systems develop and attain maturity during the early stages of industrialization; (b) frictions caused by asymmetric information and the incompleteness of contracts are important in credit markets, and intermediaries play an...