SUBJECT AREAS: Banking, Commercial banking, Customer acquisition, Risk management.The quot;Central Bankquot; series analyzes the use of information and product design for managing the counterparty risk of newly acquired customers. Central Bank, a mid-sized regional U.S. bank, was attempting to...

Banks closed over 30 million debit/checking consumer accounts involuntarily in 2001-2005 for excessive overdrafts, with these former bank customers having limited or no subsequent access to the formal banking system. Using a new county-level database, we analyze the determinants of these...

Many companies operate units which are dispersed across different types of markets, and thus serve significantly diverging customer bases. Such market-type dispersion is likely to compromise the headquarters' ability to control its local managers' behavior and satisfy the divergent needs of...

This paper uses the context of online banking to investigate the consequences of using self-service distribution channels to alter customer interactions with the firm. Using a sample of retail banking customers observed over a 30-month period at a large U.S. bank, we test whether changes in...