This paper examines the performance of 515 banks in 16 transition economies for the years 1994 - 99 based on their public financial accounts. We first examine lending behaviour and probability distribution of bank profitability to determine whether these banks exhibit behaviour and performance...

Extant studies treat the impact of entry on concentration and market structure mechanically; with some going further to naively identify fall in concentration as the cause of competition. It is the intention of this paper to critically examine these contentions by studying trends and...

Many insurers pay insurance agencies annual contingency fees, or bonuses, for profitable sales in excess of stipulated sales targets. This paper asks whether the prospect of such contingency fees influences an agency's sales among competing insurers. The analysis makes use of data on sales by...

We argue that the deregulation leading up to the Big Bang has played a major role in the current banking problems. This deregulation allowed large corporations to quickly switch from depending on banks to relying on capital market financing. We present evidence showing that large Japanese...

This paper documents the relationships between bank size and measures of charter value and insolvency risk in a sample of publicly traded banks in 21 industrialized countries for the 1988-1998 period. With the exception of small U.S. bank holding companies, charter values decrease in size and...

We argue that the deregulation leading up to the Big Bang has played a major role in the current banking problems. This deregulation allowed large corporations to quickly switch from depending on banks to relying on capital market financing. We present evidence showing that large Japanese...

This paper studies an intermediated market operated by middlemen with high inventory holdings. I present a directed search model in which middlemen are less likely to experience a stockout because they have the advantage of inventory capacity, relative to other sellers. The model explains why...

This paper examines the performance of 515 banks in 16 transition economies for the years 1994-99 based on their public financial accounts. We first examine lending behaviour and probability distribution of bank profitability to determine whether these banks exhibit behaviour and performance...

In this paper, a parametric cost frontier for the credit card market is specified ("stochastic frontier approach" - SFA) and robustness checks of the main results are performed. The aim is to provide some clues to: the x-inefficiency problem; the main technical characteristics of the industry;...

While the single market has largely been achieved for the EU market for goods, the services sector has lagged behind. This has resulted in sluggish activity, low productivity growth, high prices, that show a wide dispersion and relatively high inflation in this sector. Both the OECD product...