This article examines the information content of the sale announcement of a borrower's loans by its lending bank. We find significant negative stock returns for the borrower on the loan sale announcement, particularly for subpar loan sales, where the bank's information advantage is greatest....

This paper uses a unique database to test the effect of ATM surcharges on larger versus smaller banks. Only nonbank ("foreign") users of ATMs pay ATM surcharges. Customers thus face incentives to switch accounts from smaller banks to larger banks in order to avoid high ATM surcharges. We find...

Differences between large and small banks' net purchase behavior in the (uncollaterized) federal funds and (collateralized) repurchase agreements markets are documented. The larger a bank's asset size, the larger, ceteris paribus, its Federal Funds purchases. The threshold-asset size is in the...

We study the effect of loan portfolio focus versus diversification on the return and the risk of 105 Italian banks over the period 1993–99 using data on bank-by-bank exposures to different industries and sectors. We find that diversification is not guaranteed to produce superior performance...

This article analyzes the impact of prime rate changes on stock prices of prime rate change initiating banks relative to noninitiating banks. The prime rate as a "sticky price" is analyzed, and the potential directions (and sizes) of information effects are discussed and empirically examined. It...