In this paper we examine empirically the relationship between banks’ income diversification, expansion into non-traditional activities and performance. Using detailed information on the U.S. banking sector over the period 2002-12, we investigate whether or not banks’ involvement in various...

This paper examines the determinants of bank failures in the US banking system during the recent financial crisis. The analysis employs a data set on the financial statements of FDIC-insured commercial banks and their bank holding companies, along with information on bank failures, mergers and...

This paper investigates the characteristics of US and Canadian pension funds that allocate assets to hedge funds. The typical pension fund that invests in hedge funds is a large sophisticated pension fund that diversi…es its portfolio across numerous classes of investments, private equity in...

This paper investigates the relationship between bank competition and credit procyclicality for 17 OECD countries on the 1986-2009 period. We account for heterogeneity among countries in terms of bank competition through the use of a hierarchical clustering methodology. We then estimate panel...

The present paper investigates how an emerging market economy is affected when it suddenly faces a higher risk premium on international capital markets. We study this question empirically for five Latin American economies over the period 1994-2007 within a structural panel vector autoregression...

This paper investigates offshore financial centers in the Caribbean from the perspective of offshore economies, onshore economies, and international investors. Using multilateral data on the international positions of banks, we analyze the flow of funds that has been transferred from the major...