The purpose of this work is to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of banking system in Russia, and to understand its core dependencies and potential risks. The system, the way we find it now, has evolved though difficult transition from highly centralized and planned Soviet economy to...

Human nature does not like change, and unfortunately, in some areas, changes must be made. From an economic standpoint, firms have to adapt to new technologies, the size of markets change constantly as a result of globalization, and customers' needs are never-ending and wide-ranging. In a word,...

This paper examines the stock prices of Chinese companies dual-listed in the A and H share markets between January 2006 and March 2008. While most previous studies have concluded that the A share market does not have significant exposure to the Hong Kong market, I find that following the...

One of the keys to building a solid economy is the existence of a long term debt market. Long term borrowing is crucial for personal home ownership, the creation of critical infrastructure, and the development of major real estate projects. Most emerging market economies do not have a long term...

The idea that massive natural resource endowments would lead countries to weak economic growth and development is counterintuitive. Oil, gas, copper, gold or other resource riches should, at least in theory, spearhead countries with such natural wealth to growth that parallels...

The world-wide consolidation in the electronic trading industry has provided evidence that small exchanges and trading portals need to deliver more than sophisticated technology, streaming quotes and market data. In order to deliver value and survive, they need to provide liquidity. Noteworthy...

Consolidation in the financial industry has progressed rapidly in many countries. In the United States, large financial corporations, such as Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, formed complex financial groups and conglomerate structures composed of a commercial bank, a securities company, and an...

Do financial crises tend to arise together? Recent financial crisis that has originated from credit crisis in US in 2008 spread throughout countries ranging from Asia, to Europe, to Africa. Generally a shock to one country's asset market that causes changes in asset prices in another country's...