This paper generalizes Porter’s notion of the value chain for the analysis of service industries. The generalization entails that the flow and the physical transformation and assembly of goods that are characteristic of manufacturing are generalized into flows and transformation of data and...

How do banks react to increased interbank competition?Recent banking theory offers conflicting predictions about the impact of competition on bank orientation í L H WKH choice of relationship based versus transactional banking í DQG EDQN LQGXVWU\ specialization.We empirically investigate the...

A recent string of theoretical papers highlights the importance of geographical distance in explaining pricing and availability of loans to small firms.Lenders located in the vicinity of small firms have significantly lower monitoring and transaction costs, and hence considerable market power if...

Recent theoretical models argue that a bank's organizational structure reflects its lending technology.A hierarchically organized bank will employ mainly hard information, whereas a decentralized bank will rely more on soft information.We investigate theoretically and empirically how bank...

A recent string of theoretical papers has highlighted the importance of geographical distance in explaining loan rates for small firms.Lenders located in the vicinity of small firms face significantly lower transportation and monitoring costs, and hence wield considerable market power, if...

How do banks react to increased competition?Recent banking theory offers conflicting predictions about the impact of competition on bank orientation - i.e., the choice of relationship based versus transactional banking.We empirically investigate the impact of interbank competition on bank branch...

We consider the problem of control of access to a firm's productive asset, embedding the decision makers into a structure of formal authority relationships.Within such a structure, decision makers act as principal to some decision makers, while they act as agent to other decision makers.We study...

In this paper we analyze the innovative performance of alliance networks as a function of the technological distance between partners, a firm's network position (centrality) and total network density.We study how these three elements of an alliance network, apart and in combination, affect the...

This chapter reviews some key points in the analysis of trust, based on Nooteboom (2002)i.The following questions are addressed.What can we have trust in?What is the relation between trust and control?What are the sources of trust? And what are its limits?By what process is trust built up and...