Great strides have been made in the theory of bank technology in terms of explaining banks’ comparative advantage in producing informationally intensive assets and financial services and in diversifying or offsetting a variety of risks. Great strides have also been made in explaining sub-par...

Earlier studies found little evidence of scale economies at large banks; later studies using data from the 1990s uncovered such evidence, providing a rationale for very large banks seen worldwide. Using more recent data, we estimate scale economies using two production models. The standard...

Our research as well as that by other authors has found scale economies at all sizes of banks and the largest scale economies at the largest banks – that is, larger banks are able to provide products at lower average cost than smaller banks. While the earlier literature found that scale...

The unique capital structure of commercial banking - funding production with demandable debt that participates in the economyś payments system - affects various aspects of banking. It shapes banks ́comparative advantage in providing financial products and services to informationally opaque...

We investigate the relative performance of publicly traded community banks (those with assets less than $10 billion) versus larger banks (those with assets between $10 billion and $50 billion). A body of research has shown that community banks have potential advantages in relationship lending...

By eliminating the influence of statistical noise, stochastic frontier techniques permit the estimation of the best-practice value of a firmś investment opportunities and the magnitude of a firmś systematic failure to achieve its best-practice market value - a gauge of the magnitude of agency...

Self regulation encouraged by market discipline constitutes a key component of Basel II's third pillar. But high-risk investment strategies may maximize the expected value of some banks. In these cases, does market discipline encourage risk-taking that undermines bank stability in economic...

This paper explores how to incorporate banks' capital structure and risk-taking into models of production. In doing so, the paper bridges the gulf between (1) the banking literature that studies moral hazard effects of bank regulation without considering the underlying microeconomics of...