We examine the "marketability hypothesis," which states that stock splits enhance the attractiveness of shares to investors by restoring prices to a preferred trading range. We examine splits of mutual fund shares because they provide a clean testing ground for the marketability hypothesis,...

We study the problem of asset and liability management of participating insurance policies with guarantees. We develop a scenario optimization model for integrative asset and liability management, analyze the tradeoffs in structuring such policies, and study alternative choices in funding them....

We discuss extensions of intensity based models for pricing credit risk and derivative securities to the simulation and valuation of portfolios. The stochasticity in interest rates, credit spreads (default intensities) and rating migrations are incorporated in a unified framework. Scenarios of...

The financial services industry is the major investor in information technology in the U.S. economy; the typical bank spends as much as 15% of non-interest expenses on IT. A persistent finding of research into the performance of financial institutions is that performance and efficiency vary...

This paper examines the role of capital in financial institutions. As the introductory article to a conference on the role of capital management in banking and insurance, it describes the authors' views of why capital is important, how market-generated capital requirements' differ from...

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 investigate the effects of technological change, deregulation, and dynamic changes in competition on the performance of U.S. banks. Our most striking result is that during 1991-1997, cost productivity worsened while profit productivity improved substantially, particularly for banks engaging...

China began to borrow in the world capital markets in the late 19th century, issuing bonds to pay for defense as well as for large-scale economic development. Particularly interesting is the role that the clash between domestic and international investors played in China's 1911 revolution. The...