The opacity of the banking business has been identified as a main source of stock crash risk. Level 3 financial instruments are particularly opaque products, as their fair value is neither directly available nor measurable using market prices. Focusing on Europe, we find robust evidence that L3...

Contextual factors usually assume an important role in determining firms' productive efficiencies. Nevertheless, identifying them in a regression framework might be complicated. The problem arises from the efficiencies being correlated with each other when estimated by Data Envelopment Analysis...

Evidence of financial integration and convergence are considered of importance in assessing the outcome of EU deregulation policies aimed at improving the efficiency and performance of banking sectors. This paper evaluates the recent dynamics of bank cost efficiency by means of data envelopment...

TSince the mid-1990s the banking sector in the Latin American emerging markets has experienced profound changes due to financial liberalisation, a significant increase in foreign investments and greater mergers activities often occurring following financial crises. The wave of consolidation and...

The deregulation of financial services in the European Union (EU), together with the establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union, aimed at the creation of a level playing-field in the provision of banking services across the EU. The plan was to remove entry barriers and to foster both...

The 1990s have witnessed a significant growth in bank income generated through non-traditional activities, especially for large EU universal banking institutions. Using the non-parametric Malmquist methodology this study analyses the impact of the inclusion of off-balance sheet (OBS) business in...

This paper investigates the impact of alternative financial and banking structures on banks' overall efficiency. The effect of size on the estimated banking efficiency is also examined. These issues are addressed by first measuring the cost efficiencies over 1998?2003 for a sample of commercial,...

Consolidation in the global banking industry has resulted in the emergence of financial conglomerates that conduct an extensive range of businesses with a group structure. To date, few studies have investigated the performance features of such groups. This study aims to extend the literature by...