We survey the extant literature on the effects of both a bank's organizational structure and the physical distance separating it from the lender on lending decisions. Banks do engage in spatial pricing, where the underlying mechanism can be both transportation costs and information asymmetries....

This paper investigates the equity investments and voting rights that American banks control through their trust business. Following the evidence that German banks use the proxy voting rights they control to place their representatives on the firm's board of directors, the paper also studies...

This paper presents the first evidence on the impact of external governance mechanisms, board diversity and independence, and management compensation on outreach and sustainability of microfinance institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States. Results indicate that...

This paper empirically examines how changes in the hierarchical structure of a large organization can affect incentives. The empirical analysis exploits a change in the hierarchical structure of the Corporate Division of a private foreign commercial bank in Argentina between 1999 and 2001. Using...

For over 100 years, the German company network was a major feature of organized corporate governance in Germany. This paper uses network visualization techniques and qualitative-historical analysis to discuss the structure, origins and development of this network and to analyze the reasons for...

A persistent paradox in stochastic frontier efficiency research is that we cannot compare the X-efficiency of firms without assuming these firms to operate under a common frontier. In this paper, we address this imbalance by constructing so-called meta-frontiers. Specifically, we build on recent...

The U.S. banking industry is experiencing a renewed interest in retail banking, broadly defined as the range of products and services provided to consumers and small businesses. This article documents the return to retail in the U.S. banking industry and offers some insight into why the shift...

This paper provides evidence on organizational structure, geographic diversification, and performance at bank holding companies (BHCs). First, we show that a BHC's member banks benefit from access to the parent organization's internal capital market. Second, we ask if the benefits of internal...

With the realisation of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), there will be no difference in the euro area between national and cross-border retail payments. SEPA is aimed at fostering competition and innovation, and improving conditions for customers. This requires concerted efforts from...

Custody is, in essence, a service consisting in holding (and normally administering) securities on behalf of third parties. In step with the growth of sophisticated financial markets, custody has evolved into a complex industry no longer characterised by physical safekeeping but by a range of...