Since the 1980s, industrial organizations have adopted practices such as Six Sigma to maintain and enhance competitiveness. It is expected that Six Sigma should work as a positive signal to convey quality expectations to both customers and investors. Financially speaking, Six-Sigma must be...

While the motivation and riskiness of US off-balance sheet banking activities have been studied both theoretically and empirically, no such study has been found dealing with Canadian off-balance sheet banking activities, although such activities are numerically huge, and growing larger each...

This paper examines the impact of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act across three main sectors of the financial services industry: commercial banks, insurance companies, and brokerage firms, taking account of the wealth effect associated with the announcement. We find that the law has a differential impact...

Community banking plays an important role in financial intermediation in the United States, especially in the context of providing financing in smaller, rural markets and for small businesses. However, recent trends in regulation, the economic environment, and industry practices have led to a...

This essay searches for a link between house prices, broad money, private credit and the macro-economy among 19 emerging markets. We also explain which variables predict the emerging markets house price index returns. The analysis consists of data for 19 emerging markets spanning the period...

Our results show that US banks with a relatively high share of non-interest income become riskier with a moving toward non-interest-generating activities, especially activities from investment banking, proprietary trading, etc. The findings also prove, although weakly, that banks with a...

This paper finds that the dividend signaling hypothesis is able to explain the phenomenon of asset concentration in short- and medium-term investments in the Islamic interest-free banking system. To maintain a stable dividend payout, managers of Islamic banks will prefer to invest in instruments...

We model the behavior of a hypothetical investor who is interested in U.S. securities but is also interested in compliance with Islamic Investment Guidelines. We apply financial restrictions to 1990-2010 sample of Shariah-recommended REITs. In cumulative performance tests, we find an evidence of...

We examine the relationship between performance of the bank holding company and several board characteristics. We find that board size, CEO tenure and board tenure enhance bank performance. However, we find no evidence that board structure or CEO power influences bank performance. More...

Using most recent firm level data over the period 1986-1994, this study examines the stock market reaction with respect to pension plan type (defined benefit or defined contribution) established following the termination of an over funded DB plan. Generally, we find support for the separation...