In the framework of the broader political and economic development of the individual states on Balkan Peninsula the author has made the comparison between the performance of the banking sector in Yugoslavia, Romania, Greece and Bulgaria. The analysis was carried out on the sample of balance...

We find evidence that banks target return on equity (RoE) and make active use of leverage to affect the speed of adjustment towards RoE targets. That holds for both the pre- and post-2007 periods and especially for banks that tend to operate with above median leverage among their peer group. As...