Based on an unbalanced panel of all Bavarian cooperative banks for the years of 1989-97 which includes information on 283 mergers, we analyze motives and cost effects of small-scale mergers in German banking. Estimating a frontier cost function with a time-variable stochastic efficiency term we...

For a Cournot duopoly with a foreign firm exporting to the home firm's market hedging against unfavorable shifts in the stochastic spot exchange rate is analyzed. In a two-stage setting with product market and hedging decisions we show that hedging can be used as a strategic device. Under...