Technological change, especially in information technology, has brought profound changes to services sectors like the financial sector. Two decades ago, closed-system communications methods like faxing had yet to break through. Presently the internet, with its open architecture, makes new ways...

This paper surveys the behavioural finance explanation of six puzzles of finance. These puzzles are: stock price under- and overreactions, excessive trading and the gender puzzle, financial hypes and panic, the equity premium puzzle, the winner/loser puzzle and the dividend puzzle. After an...

The introduction of the Euro in EMU is enhancing international competition between European banks, forcing banks to become more efficient. Which countries will be effected the most? The stochastic cost frontier approach is used to estimate the X-efficiency of the European banks, and a...

We study whether foreign and domestic banks in Central and Eastern Europe have reacted differently to business cycle conditions and host country banking crises. Our unique panel dataset comprises data of more than 300 banks for the period 1993-2000, with detailed information on bank ownership...

In this paper, I investigate whether improving the traditional SCP model gives additional insights in the existence of market power in the Dutch banking market. I first improve the measurement of market structure. Then, I introduce a simple Cournot-model, which results in a more flexible measure...

A persistent paradox in stochastic frontier efficiency research is that we cannot compare the X-efficiency of firms without assuming these firms to operate under a common frontier. In this paper, we address this imbalance by constructing so-called metafrontiers. Specifically, we build on recent...

When focusing on banks' repo businesses, it appears that the regulatory approach has gradually developed around two main themes: the role of collateral in repo-style transactions and the supervisory attention given to different risk categories. The regulatory treatment of collateral has recently...

Economic capital models have recently come into vogue as a tool to measure risk and return on a firm-wide basis and to allocate capital accordingly. Further research into this subject was deemed of common interest to both the financial industry and financial supervisors, as the regulatory regime...

Measures of concentration and competition are of vital importance for welfare-related public policy toward market structure and conduct in the banking industry. Theoretical characteristics of ten market concentration measures are discussed and numerical examples illustrate differences and...

The proposed risk sensitive minimum requirements of the new Basel Capital Accord have raised concerns about possible (acceleration of) procyclical behaviour of banking, which might threat en macroeconomic stability. This article analyses the interaction between business cycles and banks over the...