The tremendous growth of markets for credit derivatives since the mid 1990's has raised questions regarding the role of these instruments in the banking in- dustry which is heavily exposed to credit risk. However, while recent literature mainly focused on pricing and optimal decisions regarding...

Efficiency is considered a key factor when evaluating a bank's performance. Moreover, efficiency enhancement is an explicit policy objective in the Single Market Directive of the European Commission. But efficiency improvements may come at the expense of deteriorating bank profits and excessive...

This paper investigates whether there is any consistency between banks' financial strength ratings (bank rating) and their risk-return profiles. It is expected that banks with high ratings tend to earn high expected returns for the risks they assume and thereby have a low probability of...

This paper explores how to incorporate banks' capital structure and risk-taking into models of production. In doing so, the paper bridges the gulf between (1) the banking literature that studies moral hazard effects of bank regulation without considering the underlying microeconomics of...

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...

This paper investigates whether there is any consistency between banks' financial strength ratings (bank rating) and their risk-return profiles. It is expected that banks with high ratings tend to earn high expected returns for the risks they assume and thereby have a low probability of...

This paper investigates whether there is any consistency between banks’ financial strength ratings (bank rating) and their risk-return profiles. It is expected that banks with high ratings tend to earn high expected returns for the risks they assume and thereby have a low probability of...

The paper develops new indices of financial stability based on an explicit model of expected utility maximization by financial institutions subject to the classical technology restrictions of neoclassical production theory. The model can be estimated using standard econometric techniques, like...

The industrial organization approach to banking is applied to analyze theeffects of the introduction of joint credit and interbank rate risk on the optimaldecisions on deposits and loans of a competitive bank. It is found that dueto the introduction of both sources of risk there appear direct...