This paper examines the impact of participants’ age distribution on the asset allocation of Dutch pension funds, using a unique data set of pension fund investment plans for 2007. Theory predicts a negative effect of age on (strategic) equity exposures. We observe that pension funds do...

The traditional gravity model has been applied many times to international trade flows, especially in order to analyze trade creation and trade diversion. However, there are two fundamental objections to the model: it cannot describe substitutions between flows and it lacks a cogent theoretical...

Measures of concentration and competition are of vital importance for welfare-related public policy toward market structure and conduct in the banking industry. Theoretical characteristics of ten market concentration measures are discussed and numerical examples illustrate differences and...

The proposed risk sensitive minimum requirements of the new Basel Capital Accord have raised concerns about possible (acceleration of) procyclical behaviour of banking, which might threat en macroeconomic stability. This article analyses the interaction between business cycles and banks over the...

The efficiency of European banks is crucial in the light of the current and expected increase in competition. This paper seeks to discover the level and spread of bank efficiency in Europe. In particular, it focuses on differences across countries, various sizes of banks (reflecting several...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...

The introduction of the Euro in EMU is enhancing international competition between European banks, forcing banks to become more efficient. Which countries will be effected the most? The stochastic cost frontier approach is used to estimate the X-efficiency of the European banks, and a...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...