Finnish payment methods have changed rapidly as payment cards have gained increasing popularity and have, to an extent, replaced cash.This article examines this phenomenon and the trends in cash and electronic payment methods in Finland.It starts with an introduction to the statistical data on...

One of the most important recent innovations in financial markets has been the development of credit derivative products that allow banks to more actively manage their credit portfolios than ever before. We analyse the effect that access to these markets has had on the lending behaviour of a...

This is the first paper that examines economies of scale in stock exchanges. The data employed in the study include cost and output statistics for 37 stock exchanges in four continents around the world for the year 1997. I estimate two traditional cost functions and find that ray (overall) scale...

This paper investigates the existence and extent of economies of scale and scope among stock exchanges. Evidence from 38 exchanges in 32 countries and 4 continents around the world for the years 1989-1998 indicates the existence of significant economies of scale and scope. The degree of such...

We derive a principal-agent model to analyze the effectiveness of bonus caps and deferrals in regulating banks' risk-taking. We calibrate the model to a sample of large US banks on the eve of the Global Financial Crisis and run counterfactual analyses of the potential effects of the...

We derive a principal-agent model to analyze the effectiveness of bonus caps and deferrals in regulating banks' risk-taking. We calibrate the model to a sample of large US banks on the eve of the Global Financial Crisis and run counterfactual analyses of the potential effects of the regulations....

​According to EU legislation, the national authorities should use the principle of 'guided discretion' in setting the countercyclical capital buffer (CCB), which increases banks' resilience against systemic risk associated with periods of excessive credit growth. This means that the decision...

​I propose a financial stress index (FSI) for the Finnish financial system that aims to reflect the functionality of the financial system and provide an aggregate measure of financial stress in the money, bond, equity and foreign exchange markets and the banking sector. The FSI is a composite...

Failure in bank corporate governance has been seen as a contributing factor to excessive risk-taking pre-crisis with devastating implications as risks realised during the financial crisis. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence on the impact of managerial incentives on bank crisis performance is...