When analyzing panel data using regression models, it is often reasonable to allow for time-varying covariate effects. We propose a novel approach to modelling timevarying coefficients in panel data regressions, which is based on penalized regression techniques. To illustrate the usefulness of...

The validation of probability calibration is an inherently difficult task. We develop a testing procedure for credit-scoring models. The models comprise two components to check whether the ex-ante probabilities support the ex-post frequencies. The first component tests the level of the...

This paper studies the cyclical pattern of ex post markups in the banking system using balance-sheet data for a large set of countries. Markups are strongly countercyclical even after controlling for financial development, banking concentration, operational costs, inflation, and simultaneity or...

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...

The US banking industry offers a unique, natural and fertile environment to study geography's effects on banks' behavior and performance. The literature on banks' operating performance, while extensive, says little about the influence of spatial interactions on banks' performance. We compute and...

This paper focuses on investigating the determinants of lending rates and interest rate spreads in Macedonia. In order to quantify the effect of various factors on lending rates and interest rate spreads during the 2001-2009 period, we use panel estimation techniques on a sample of commercial...

The latest global financial and economic crisis reignited the debate on the costs and benefits of foreign bank presence. While discussions on the optimal financing model of foreign owned banks are ongoing, the consensus on the benefits of foreign banks presence is not a matter of dispute. Given...

A reduced-form equation relating the log of the capital account ratio to several micro and macro variables, particularly the profitability variable, for the commercial banks in nine European countries over eleven years, 1991-2001, was constructed. The equation consisted of a fixed-effects part...

Our research as well as that by other authors has found scale economies at all sizes of banks and the largest scale economies at the largest banks - that is, larger banks are able to provide products at lower average cost than smaller banks. While the earlier literature found that scale...