Regional perspectives on office service accessibility in Finnish banking markets: are there differences in service accessibility between the regions?

In Finland there was huge reduction in number of bank branches during the 1990?s which seems to be stabilized during last few years and even some new bank branches has been founded. In this paper I analyze the locations of bank branches in Finland by using municipality level data containing both economic and geographic variables. At first I analyze banks? entry/exit by the area-basis. Then the concentration in analysis moves to branch network strategies of bank groups, i.e. what is the typical office network strategy of centrally managed bank groups and how bank groups with decentralized decision-making differ from that, and what are the geographic core market areas of the bank groups. At last the differences in bank office service availability between Finnish provinces is analyzed in the light of previous results. Data used in analysis is panel containing bank branch numbers for each bank group in municipality, and population, geographic and economic features of municipalities in years 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2001.

SCALE ECONOMIES AND EFFICIENCIES FOR CHINESE RURAL CREDIT COOPERATIVES

This paper evaluates scale economies and efficiencies for Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs) in China using both parametric and nonparametric techniques. Diseconomies of scale and allocative inefficiency are found. The results reveal the need for RCCs to decrease their size and the need for government to liberalize the financial market.Agribusiness,

Accounting for Heterogeneity in Hedging Behavior: Comparing & Evaluating Grouping Methods

Heterogeneity, i.e., the notion that individuals respond differently to economic stimuli, can have profound consequences for the interpretation of behavior and the formulation of agricultural policy. This paper compares and evaluates three grouping techniques that can be used to account for heterogeneity in financial behavior. Two are well established: company-type grouping and cluster analysis. A third, the generalized mixture regression model, has recently been developed and is worth considering as market participants are grouped such that their response to the determinants of economic behavior is similar. We evaluate the grouping methods in a hedging framework by assessing their ability to reflect relationships consistent with theory. The empirical findings show that the economic relationships are more consistent with theory within the groups identified by the mixture model, and suggest that researchers interested in identifying segments of the population in which participants behave in a similar manner may consider using of mixture model in the presence of heterogeneity in financial behavior.economic behavior, heterogeneity, hedging, methods, Risk and Uncertainty, A10, B40, C1, D0, G0, L2, Q13,

Is money still useful for policy in East Asia?

Since the East Asian crises of 1997, a number of East Asian economies have allowed greater exchange rate flexibility and abandoned monetary targets in favor of inflation targeting, apparently because the perceived usefulness of money as a predictor of inflation, i.e. the information content of money, has fallen. In this paper, we discuss factors that are likely to have influenced the stability of the relationship between money and inflation, particularly in the 1990s, and then assess this relationship in a set of East Asian economies. We focus on (1) the stability of the behavior of the velocity of money; (2) the ability of money growth to predict inflation as measured by tests of Granger causality, and (3) the contribution of money to the variance of the forecast error of inflation. We find evidence that, with a few exceptions in which capital flows were particularly large, velocity remained generally stable, as did the relationship between money growth and inflation. However, the contribution of money to inflation forecast errors fell considerably in the 1990s, reducing its value as an information variable to monetary authorities.Banks and banking, Foreign ; Philippines

Regional differences in bank office service accessibility: an entry approach

Structural changes in retail banking markets and development of remote access technologies have reduced the number of bank branches in many developed countries. That makes close-downs of bank branches and service accessibility in rural/peripheral regions interesting topics of public discussion. This paper uses an empirical entry approach in order to analyze whether the peripheral regions have suffered from the development branch networks in general, or are some specific regions faced more closedowns that one can expect? The analysis shows that there are some differences between the regions in accessibility of the services measured both by the number of bank groups and number of branches located in the municipality. Commutation directed to the municipality increased the accessibility as well as the increase in average taxable income. These characteristics are typically related to the local centers but also the administrative city-status had additional positive effect. When it comes to the development of accessibility, the analysis shows no differences between the regions.banking, accessibility, regional differences, technological development, concentration

HOW TO GROUP MARKET PARTICIPANTS? HETEROGENEITY IN HEDGING BEHAVIOR

Using a generalized mixture model, we model individual heterogeneity by identifying groups of participants that respond in a similar manner to the determinants of economic behavior. The procedure emphasizes the role of theory as the determinants of behavior are used to simultaneously explain market activities and to discriminate among groups of market participants. We show the appealing properties of this modeling approach by comparing it with two often used grouping methods in an empirical study in which we estimate the factors affecting market participants' hedging behavior.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Unobserved Heterogeneity: Evidence and Implications for SMEs' Hedging Behavior

Financial research indicates that several firm characteristics are related to the use of derivatives. Less attention has been paid to the role of the characteristics of managers, which are particularly important when studying derivative usage of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). In this paper we focus on the influence of manager's level of education, the manager's decision-making unit, and the fundamental determinants of risk management - managerial risk attitude and managerial risk perception - on SMEs' commodity derivative usage. In empirical studies to date, the heterogeneity of derivative users has been neglected. We propose a generalized mixture regression model that estimates the relationship between commodity derivative usage and a set of explanatory variables across segments of an industry. Accounting for unobserved heterogeneity reveals that segments of the industry have different determinants of derivative use. Moreover, the heterogeneity at the segment level appears to mask significant effects at the aggregate level, most notably the effects of risk attitude and risk perception.Marketing,

The changing landscape of the financial services industry: what lies ahead?

Financial services industry ; Bank mergers

Why do banks disappear? The determinants of U.S. bank failures and acquisitions

This paper examines the determinants of individual bank failures and acquisitions in the United States during 1984-1993. We use bank-specific information suggested by examiner CAMEL-rating categories to estimate competing-risks hazard models with time-varying covariates. We focus especially on the role of management quality, as reflected in alternative measures of x-efficiency and find the inefficiency increases the risk of failure, while reducing the probability of a bank's being acquired. Finally, we show that the closer to insolvency a bank is, as reflected by a low equity-to-assets ratio, the more likely its acquisition.Bank failures