The U.K. pension system is traditionally seen as offering a good example to other countries, having features such as low social security pension expenditure and a high coverage of well-financed voluntary private schemes. But recent developments suggest that the model has shown weaknesses. The...

Using data from the US, UK, Japan and Canada, this paper provides evidence on the benefits to an economy from multiple avenues of intermediation. The overall conclusion is that the existence of active securities markets alongside banks is indeed beneficial to the stability of corporate...

This paper uses flow-of-funds and balance sheet data to analyze the impact of financial crises on corporate financing and GDP in a range of countries. Post-crisis GDP contractions are mainly accounted for by declines in investment and inventory and are more severe for emerging market countries....

In order to assess the effect of EMU on market conditions for banks based in countries which adopt the Single Currency, we use the H indicator suggested by Panzar and Rosse (1987). Our contribution is to assess results separately for large and small banks, and for interest income and total...

The paper evaluates the contribution industrial-sector data on loan losses could make to diversifying and pricing bank risk.It derives the mean, variance and cyclical sensitivity of sectoral provisions and write offs, then assesses implications for loan pricing; standards of capital adequacy;...

Concepts in banking output and the empirical literature on bank productivity--which employs output concepts--are critically surveyed. Related issues concerning externalities from banking activity, which entail a deviation of private from social measures of banking output, are outlined. For...