When both economies of scale and scope are simultaneously observed, merger tends to reduce costs. Numerous empirical studies have already established that beyond a certain size, banks’ costs tend to become proportional, thus establishing a limit to economies of scale and scope. We verify if...

We estimate the impact of cyclical, sectoral, and participation shocks and that of the trend on both the Canadian unemployment rate and the job vacancy rate over the 1969 to 1998 period. We conclude that a rise in the Canadian unemployment rate of almost 5 percentage units occurred between 1972...

Considerable attention has been given in the last ten years to estimation of the importance of sectoral shifts in explaining short-term fluctuations in unemployment. Recent studies have used US stock prices data to develop indexes of sectoral shocks less affected by cyclical influence than...

Financial consumers are facing paradoxical situations. On the one hand, they are overly solicited to use credits on various forms. On the other hand, segments of the population do not have access to credit. In this paper, we examine some emerging issues regarding consumer protection and...