In this paper the authors propose a new approach to the assessment of excessive risk-taking by a banking sector. They use the portfolio approach to assess the optimal risk-return combination of a bank’s portfolio, based on data for 32 categories of loans. It provides a benchmark for the...

This note investigates the determinants of leverage usually tested in Western countries on a large sample of manufacturing companies from six transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe in 1998. We observe at that time the significance of tested factors in most countries, with some...

This paper examines the implications of bank activity and short-term funding strategies for bank risk and return using an international sample of 1334 banks in 101 countries leading up to the 2007 financial crisis. Expansion into non-interest income generating activities such as trading...

A bank's interest expenses are found to increase with its degree of internationalization as proxied by its share of foreign liabilities in total liabilities or a Herfindahl index of international liability concentration, especially if the bank is performing badly. Our benchmark estimation...

Using data for 91 large banks from 45 countries, this paper finds few differences in the extent, type, and pricing of SME loans across foreign, private, and government-owned banks, even though different bank ownership types apply different lending technologies and have different organizational...