Recent U.S. legislation (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) allows commercial banks to enter merchant banking, i.e. hold equity in non-financial firms. A stylised auction-theoretic model is developed to investigate the effects of bank equity stakes in firms on the competition in bank loans. The main...

Purpose Using data on 5,491 commercial banks in the USA that were operational between 2001 second quarter and 2016 first quarter, the present study aims to examine the impact of derivative securities and its different constituent categories on bank-specific risks and profitability....

In the first part (in the previous issue of Economic Review) of this two-part study, the authors identified a number of possible benefits from combining banking and commerce, including portfolio diversification, the creation of internal capital markets, and economies of scale and scope. This...

The policy debate on whether to strengthen or to remove the legal barriers between banking and commerce has paid little attention to what the practical effects of removing the barriers would be. To help answer this question, this article, the first part of a two-part study, provides an overview...

We develop a model in order to explore how a bank's equity stake in a competitor of a borrower affects the financing relationship with the borrower and product market outcomes. The bank's affiliation with the competitor can give rise to anti- or pro-competitive effects. Large equity stakes can...

We investigate whether the spread of corporate debt contacts can be explained by their ultimate recovery rates. Using the actual realized recovery rates of defaulted debt instruments issued in the US from 1962 to 2007, we find that recovery rate is reflected in the spread at issuance, and that...

Implementation of Volcker's Rule requires a historical perspective on the original Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 that separated commercial banking from investment banks in the United States. Like the Dodd-Frank legislation, the Banking Act of 1933 was passed before full analysis of the financial...

This essay examines how the Banking Acts of the 1933 and 1935 and related New Deal legislation influenced risk taking in the financial sector of the U.S. economy. The analysis focuses on contingent liability of bank owners for losses incurred by their firms and how the elimination of this...