Despite the great success of the derivatives market, several concerns were expressed regarding the additional volatility stemming from program trading during the expiration of derivatives. This paper examines the impact of the expiration of the KOSPI 200 index derivatives on cash market of Korea...

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004The explicit or implicit protection of banks through government bail-out policies is a universal phenomenon. We analyze the competitive effects of such policies in two models with different degrees of transparency in the...

The aim of this study is to provide a methodology for the joint estimation of efficiency and market power of individual banks. The proposed method utilizes the separate implications of the new empirical industrial organization and the stochastic frontier literatures and suggests identification...

This paper analyses the effects of concentration on profitability in the US banking sector from 1994-2005, using bank-level panel data. A new index of concentration is proposed, which reflects the depth and intensity of concentration. The econometric specification facilitates the simultaneous...

This paper analyzes the relationship between market structure and performance within the Spanish banking industry. Three different stochastic measures of efficiency are used (based on three alternative distributional assumptions for inefficiency: half-normal, normal-truncated and exponential)....

We analyze a unique dataset to test an empirical model of retail bank fee determinants in five Central European countries. Due to the data structure we can cope with heterogeneity and cross-subsidization by employing a representative fee index instead of using variables associated with...

Why have general-purpose stored-value cards been unsuccessful in penetrating the U.S. market? Three necessary conditions for a payment instrument to be successful are discussed: consumers and merchants need to be convinced of its advantages over existing payment alternatives for at least some...

This paper examines how a range of stability-oriented regulatory policies for banking and insurance are related to selected stability and competition outcomes in these sectors. Based on survey information on financial market regulation, policy indicators for eight areas of prudential banking...

This paper develops a model to identify the major determinants of a bank's profit, and the general level of profitability of a banking market. It found that in Hong Kong's case, market structure, such as market concentration and market shares of banks, is not a major contributory factor. Cost...

We analyse risk-taking behaviour of banks in the context of a model based on spatial competition. Banks mobilise deposits by offering deposit rates. We show that when the market concentration is low, banks invest in the gambling asset. On the other hand, for sufficiently high levels of market...