Employing data on Indian banks for 1997-2006, we test the behavior of capital buffers over the business cycle. The evidence indicates that capital buffers exhibit pro-cyclical behavior, although the implied effects are small.

The paper investigates the performance of Indian commercial banking sector during the post reform period 1992-2004. The results indicate high levels of efficiency in costs and lower levels in profits, reflecting the importance of inefficiencies on the revenue side of banking activity. The...

The paper reviews the sources of market failure in financial institutions and markets and what can be done to alleviate them. It examines game-theoretic explanations for financial instability, in particular the role of asymmetric information in generating destabilizing behavior. In the area of...

The paper assembles data on over 1,000 manufacturing and services firms in India for the entire post-reform period from 1992 through 2002 to examine the association between corporate governance and monetary policy. The findings suggests that (a) public firms are relatively more responsive to a...

The paper discusses the theory of how banks' respond to risk-based capital standards and conducts an empirical estimation to ascertain the response of banks to capital requirements in the Indian context

Historically, central banks have had the dual objective of safeguarding monetary and financial stability. Increasingly, over the last two decades or so, concerns about financial stability have gained prominence, reflecting the growing number, breadth and severity of bouts of financial distress....

The narrow banking proposal defining a class of safe and liquid assets (generally sovereign Government securities) for investments by weak banks, backed fully by demand liabilities (generally non-interest bearing deposits) has been considered as a means of deposit protection and a possible...

The paper investigates whether the effects of monetary policy on firm investment can be transmitted through leverage. The findings indicate that monetary contractions reduce investment for highly leveraged firms. The estimates imply that a 1percentage point increase in leverage reduces...

The paper traces the determinants of off-balance sheet activities in the Indian banking sector. Using data for the period 1996 to 2004, the paper finds that, not only regulatory factors, but also market forces, captured by banks-specific characteristics and macroeconomic conditions are at work...

The study exploits 2-digit level industry data for the period 1981-2004 to ascertain the interlinkage between a monetary policy shock and industry value added. Accordingly, we first estimate a Vector Auto Regression (VAR) model to ascertain the magnitude of a monetary policy shock on industrial...