Consumer debt delinquency, as measured by being 60 or more days late in in debt payment, is an indicator of financial ill health. Using six datasets of the 1992-2007 U.S. Surveys of Consumer Finances, this study examines consumer debt delinquency over life cycle stages. Inspired by previous...

This paper uses the Malmquist Productivity Index-type DEA technique to measure the efficiency levels in Australia’s retirement income system over the period 2000-2005. It covers important segments of the industry focusing on the different fund types and analyses market dynamics under...

The U.S. mortgage loan foreclosure crisis has been called “the worst financial crisis since the great depression.” There are two distinct channels of influence of the subprime problem. The first is the rise in foreclosures that affects homeowners and the real estate industry most directly....

In recent decades, bank regulators have become increasingly reliant upon quantitative regulatory capital standards as a means of ensuring that banks hold adequate capital. The risk-based capital standards, from the 1988 Accord through the current Basel II standards, have primarily relied upon a...

This note reconsiders a theoretical result asserted to explain the success of group lending programs in LDCs. It has been claimed that if groups are allowed to form themselves, risky and safe borrowers will sort themselves into relatively homogenous groups. This "positive assortative matching"...

This paper compares the performance of portfolios of debt free firms to comparable portfolios of leveraged firms. The results of the study indicate that investments in portfolios of debt free firms tend to generate higher returns than investments in their peer portfolios of leveraged firms over...

This paper is the first attempt in the literature to investigate the effects of public social security on aggregate consumption in a time-series setting for a developing country, Turkey that has one of the most generous social security systems in the OECD region. In order to quantify the social...

This paper contributes to the literature on endogenous preferences by showing that, when income is close to the minimum required for subsistence, individuals rationally will behave as if they were risk averse. It is suggested that observed risk aversion in empirical studies can be explained by...

This paper traces the financial institution crisis of 2007-2008 to a breakdown in the incentives of regulators, supervisors, managers, and investors to perform adequate due diligence on securitized investments. Investors allowed their trust in the reputations of credit rating firms and the giant...

This study attempts to find out whether investors reward firms that carry no debt and penalize firms that carry large amount of debt during recessions. I compare the performance of portfolios of large cap debt free firms to comparable portfolios of leveraged firms during the last recession. The...