Bank branch density, defined as the number of bank branches to total deposits, has significantly declined over the past decade, fueled by a confluence of branch closings and the almost doubling of deposits between 2016 and 2022. During this period, banks with low branch density benefited from...

This study addresses the issue of whether banking performance impacts financial stability in Southeastern European countries. To answer this question, the GMM approach has been applied in the analyses of the panel data over the period 2000–2015 for Southeastern Europe. The findings reveal the...

How do financial market conditions affect real economic performance? Empirical investigations of this question have often relied on measures of external financial dependence (EFD) that are constructed using U.S. data and applied to other countries under the assumption of a stable industry...

We argue that active management's popularity is not puzzling despite the industry's poor track record. Our explanation features decreasing returns to scale: As the industry's size increases, every manager's ability to outperform passive benchmarks declines. The poor track record occurred before...

This study establishes a multi-tier framework to evaluate how fund manager characteristics systematically affect mutual fund performance. The framework includes three tiers of performance elements: 1) comprehensive performance, 2) return and risk, and 3) timing skill and picking ability. Using...