The paper attempts to present empirical evidence on the behavior of bank managers - are they risk neutral and act on behalf of shareholders to maximize profits or risk averse and trade-off profits for risk reduction? The paper examines the bank's choice of financial capital since increasing...

For nearly two decades banks in the United States have consolidated in record numbers—in terms of both frequency and the size of the merging institutions. Rhoades (1996) hypothesizes that the main motivations were increased potential for geographic expansion created by changes in state laws...

We argue for a shift in the focus of modeling production from the traditional assumptions of profit maximization and cost minimization to a more general assumption of managerial utility maximization that can incorporate risk incentives into the analysis of production and recover value-maximizing...

The authors suggest that risk plays an important role in managerial production decisions. Managers make implicit and explicit decisions related to risk, return, and cost in setting target market, product, pricing and delivery decisions. Standard models of production and cost do not explicitly...

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...

Bank consolidation is a global phenomenon that may enhance stakeholders' value if managers do not sacrifice value to build empires. We find strong evidence of managerial entrenchment at U.S. bank holding companies that have higher levels of managerial ownership, better growth opportunities,...

In recent years banks have had to operate in an increasingly competitive environment. How banks will be affected by the increased competitive pressures depends in part on how efficiently they are run.<p> <p> This paper uses the stochastic econometric cost frontier approach to study efficiency at banks...</p></p>