While recent literature has pointed out that migrants ́remittances have a positive impact on savings with financial institutions, findings with respect to access to and the use of loans have been ambiguous. This paper investigates whether the reception of remittances facilitates taking up loans...

We analyze a large merger in the Dutch banking market during the financial crisis using disaggregated data. Based on a merger simulation model, we evaluate merger-induced changes in the interest rates for savings accounts. We find that the merging banks decreased interest rates by 3 to 5 percent...

Multinomial logit is the canonical model of discrete choice but widely criticized for requiring functional form assumptions as foundation. The present paper shows that logit is behaviorally founded without such assumptions. Logit's functional form obtains if relative choice probabilities are...

We analyze the performance of firms in the German business-related services sector. A quarterly business survey provides the panel data base of our study. Firm performance is measured by the survey respondents' ordinal indication of their changes in total sales. We use a firstorder Markov chain...

The determinants of transitions between different states of financial distress are analyzed using two versions of Markov chain models: a multinomial logit model without random effects and a multinomial logit model capturing such unobservable factors. The empirical analysis is based on a panel...

Every year during school and college admissions, students and their parents devote considerable time and effort to acquiring costly information about their own preferences. In a market where students are ranked by universities based on exam scores, we explore ways to reduce wasteful information...