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...

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...