Superior information exchanged over the course of lending relationships generates bank-client specificities to the extent that such information cannot be communicated credibly to outsiders. Consequently, banks obtain higher profits from more captured borrowers than from borrowers with financing...

Pakistan undertook major financial sector reforms starting in the late 1980s. The effects of these reforms on the profitability and cost and revenue efficiency of the banking sector are evaluated. The revenue performance of all banks, and especially the privatized banks, improved significantly,...

This paper examines the selection of data source and econometric technique for studies of banking efficiency using translog cost functions. We examine the use of Seemingly Unrelated Regression estimation for a cost function, as against estimation using Ordinary Least Squares. Choice of cost data...

This thesis examines the pricing of volatility on organized U.S. options exchanges from October 31, 2005 through November 1, 2007. The research is motivated in part by the rapid growth of hedge funds that trade volatility and in part by the growing importance that the financial markets place on...

This dissertation consists of four essays on pricing fixed income derivatives and risk management. The first essay presents pricing and duration formulas for floating rate bonds and interest rate swaps with embedded options. It combines Briys et al.'s approximation with the extended Vasicek term...

The emergence of the international debt crisis in the 1980s is typically explained through exogenous shocks to the global economic system, first generating excess liquidity and then creating conditions which render previously attractive lending operations unprofitable. Thus, the international...

A growing body of evidence has accumulated on the behavior of volatility for pricing data on a variety of different financial assets. Twenty-four-hour currency markets are a particularly useful vehicle for examining the relationship between information and asset volatility--in part because the...

This dissertation (consisting of two essays) analyzes the impact of policy measures used to control the risk-taking behavior of banks. Specifically, the first essay explores the impact of increasing the required minimum capital to asset ratios on the riskiness of banks' assets. The second essay...