China is reforming its banking system, partially privatizing and permitting minority foreign ownership of three of the dominant ‘big four’ state-owned banks. This paper seeks to help predict the effects of this change by analysing the efficiency of virtually all Chinese banks in the years...

The impact of cross-border bank M&As on bank risk remains an open question. Though geographically diversifying bank M&As have the potential to reduce the risk of bank insolvency, they also have the potential to increase that risk due to the increase in risk-taking incentives for bank managers...

In this study, we reinvestigate the question of whether government banks are inferior to private banks. We use cross country data from 1993 to 2007 to trace the different types of government banks. These types comprise banks that acquire distressed banks, normal banks, or no banks at all....

In this paper we provide evidence for the effects of social norms on audit pricing by studying companies belonging to the alcohol, firearms, gambling, military, nuclear power, and tobacco industries, which are often described as “sin” companies. We hypothesize that the disparities between...

This paper provides direct evidence that managerial style is a key determinant of the firm’s cost of capital, in the context of private debt contracting. Applying the novel empirical method by Abowd, Karmarz, and Margolis (1999) to a large sample that tracks job movement of top managers, we...

We investigate the role of corporate boards in bank loan contracting. We find that when corporate boards are more independent, both price and nonprice loan terms (e.g., interest rates, collateral, covenants, and performance-pricing provisions) are more favorable, and syndicated loans comprise...

Recent cross-country comparisons of bank efficiency have been based on pooled estimates of banks across countries and have typically assumed a common frontier and that differences in performance among banks are primarily due to disparities in certain country-specific aspects of banking...

We address how lending market competition, measured by banks’ bargaining power, affects the agency costs of debt finance. We show that the threshold for obtaining loan finance is independent of the relative bargaining power of the financier. Moreover, intensified lending market competition...

We seek to contribute to both the finance-growth literature and the community banking literature by testing the effects of the relative health of community banks on economic growth and investigating potential transmission mechanisms for these effects using data from 1993–2000 on 49 nations....

Using theories of internal capital markets, this paper examines the link between financial market integration and the value of global diversification. Based on a sample of 1,491 completed cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) conducted by US acquirers during the 1990–2003 period, we...