For nearly two decades banks in the United States have consolidated in record numbers—in terms of both frequency and the size of the merging institutions. Rhoades (1996) hypothesizes that the main motivations were increased potential for geographic expansion created by changes in state laws...

We argue for a shift in the focus of modeling production from the traditional assumptions of profit maximization and cost minimization to a more general assumption of managerial utility maximization that can incorporate risk incentives into the analysis of production and recover value-maximizing...

We consider how size matters for banks in three size groups: banks with assets of less than $ 1 billion (small community banks), banks with assets between $ 1 billion and $ 10 billion (large community banks), and banks with assets between $ 10 billion and $ 50 billion (midsize banks). Community...

We consider how size matters for banks in three size groups: small community banks with assets less than $1 billion, large community banks with assets between $1 billion and $10 billion, and midsize banks with assets between $10 billion and $50 billion. To illustrate the differences between...

Bank consolidation is a global phenomenon. It may enhance the value of firms in the industry if, for example, it is driven by scale and scope economies, but skeptics often accuse bankers of sacrificing value to build empires. Using data on bank holding companies in the U.S., we find strong...

By eliminating the influence of statistical noise, stochastic frontier techniques permit the estimation of the best-practice value of a firm´s investment opportunities and the magnitude of a firm´s systematic failure to achieve its best-practice market value - a gauge of the magnitude of...

The second Basel Capital Accord points to market discipline as a tool to reinforce capital standards and supervision in promoting bank safety and soundness. The Bank for International Settlements contends that market discipline imposes strong incentives on banks to operate in a safe and...

The authors suggest that risk plays an important role in managerial production decisions. Managers make implicit and explicit decisions related to risk, return, and cost in setting target market, product, pricing and delivery decisions. Standard models of production and cost do not explicitly...