The profit-maximizing and oligopoly bank model developed by Bresnahan and Lau allows determining the degree of market power held by an average bank. The equilibrium price equation includes a mark up, which is not used in the case of perfect competition but which is partially used in the case of...

This paper analyzes the impact of ongoing financial integration and increase in crossborder activities on banks’ common exposure to shocks and on banking sector systemic risk. For that, we study the evolution of correlations between large international banks’ asset-to-debt ratios over...

This paper investigates the impact of international swap lines on stock returns using data from banks in emerging markets. The analysis shows that swap lines by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) had a positive impact on bank stocks in Central and Eastern Europe. It then highlights the importance of...

On 5 December 1925, the ‘Portuguese Bank Note Bubble’ burst. The Lisbon daily newspaper, O Século (The Century), revealed the swindle in the headline ‘O Pais em Crise’ (The Country in Crisis). The article describes how twenty-eight year old white-collar worker, Artur Virgilio Alves...

This paper analyzes the determinants of bank acquisitions both within and across 25 members of the European Union (EU-25) during the period 1997-2004. Our results suggest that poorly managed banks (those with a high cost-to-income ratio) and larger banks are more likely to be acquired by other...

This paper examines whether bank ownership (public versus private, domestic versus foreign) is correlated with bank lending behavior over the business cycle. The paper finds that state-owned banks may play a useful credit-smoothing role because their lending is less responsive to macroeconomic...

This paper builds a new dataset on bank ownership and bank performance covering approximately 50,000 observations for 119 countries over the 1995-2002 period. The paper then uses the dataset to reassess the relationship between bank ownership and bank performance, providing separated estimations...

We extend the literature on the effects of managerial entrenchment to consider how safety-net subsidies and financial distress costs interact with managerial incentives to influence capital structure in U.S. commercial banking. Using cross-sectional data on publicly traded, highest-level U.S....

Great strides have been made in the theory of bank technology in terms of explaining banks' comparative advantage in producing informationally intensive assets and financial services and in diversifying or offsetting a variety of risks. Great strides have also been made in explaining sub-par...

In recent years, regulators have increased their focus on the capital adequacy of banking institutions to enhance the stability of the financial system. The purpose of the present paper is to shed some light on whether and how Swiss Banks react to constraints placed by the regulator on their...