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 offers a possible explanation for the conflicting empirical results in the literature concerning the relation between loan risk and collateral. Specifically, we posit that different economic characteristics or types of collateral pledges may be associated with the empirical dominance...

The literature has documented a positive relationship between the use of credit scoring for small business loans and small business credit availability, broadly defined. However, this literature is hampered by the fact that all of the studies are based on a single 1998 survey of the very largest...

We analyze the takeover premiums paid for a sample of European bank mergers between 1997 and 2007. We find that acquiring banks value profitable, high-growth, and low-risk targets. We also find that the strength of bank regulation and supervision and of deposit insurance regimes in Europe has...

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this...

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt-contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant...

This paper studies the impact of European bank mergers and acquisitions on changes in key safety and soundness measures of both acquirers and targets. We find that capitalization, profitability, and liquidity show signs of statistically and economically significant mean reversion for acquirers....

This paper analyzes the relationship between the quality of the commercial credit portfolio and diversification in the financial entities of Argentina during the period 1998-2006. To this effect, a database of the financial sector (banking and non-banking) is used, which allows to consider three...

When the debt of firms in distress is dispersed, a restructuring agreement is difficult to reach because of free riding. We develop a repeated game in which banks come across each other frequently, allowing them to threaten a punishment in case of free riding. As the number of lending banks...

This paper documents how a system wide deterioration in funding quality, which we argue to be underpinned by macroeconomic conditions, can have a substantial effect in the pricing of deposit and loan rates. The study is motivated by a puzzling observation from Turkish banking system. During...