Financial intermediation, competition and risk

The International Finance and Banking Society (IFABS) is one of the world’s leading organizations for the promotion of research and understanding of banking and finance. Established in 2009, its purpose is to raise awareness of the importance of banking and finance for economic development and the wellbeing of members of society. It achieves this by providing a forum for discussion and critical analysis of the major financial and banking challenges that face the contemporary world. IFABS provides a set of networking opportunities for academics, research students, policy makers and practitioners to share new knowledge, which is underpinned by high quality research. Additionally, IFABS sponsors an annual international conference along with seminars and workshops throughout the year on current banking and finance issues. Over a relatively short period of time, IFABS has gained an enviable reputation and now has a membership of over 1000, which continues to grow. The 2011 IFABS Conference was held at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Rome III, Italy, in collaboration with the School of Management of the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, between 30 June and 2 July 2011. The Conference attracted 598 paper submissions and after a rigorous selection process by the members of the Scientific Committee, 212 papers were accepted for presentation. Of the papers presented, about 76 papers were submitted for the special issue and underwent the normal journal review process. Among them, 18 of them passed the JBF selection process and have been accepted for publication. These papers cover a wide range of contemporary research issues in banking and finance and we group them in three areas: financial intermediation, investment and asset pricing, and miscellaneous research issues in financ

Market crises and Basel capital requirements: Could Basel III have been different? Evidence from Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIGS)

Basel III represents a crucial step in strengthening the capital rules underlying banking operations, aimed at reducing the probability and severity of a systemic crisis. Alongside two supplementary capital buffers, the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision imposed severe pressure on the Value-at-Risk based Internal Models Approach in order to increase. This is to increase the capital base by adding the stressed Value-at-Risk component in an effort to reduce reliance on internal models while keeping the Standardized Approach avenue open. However, even though those measures might appear theoretically correct, evidence gathered for long and short exposures in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain highlights several defects in Basel III. We emphasize that leptokurtic models, primarily those derived from Extreme Value Theory, should be enforced in the regulations given their superior performance in market crises, and that Basel II could have shielded against 2008 mayhem provided that heavy-tailed techniques had been employed

Cointegration, causality and Wagner's law A test for Northern Cyprus, 1977-1996

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:3597.9497(99/2) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Consolidation in the European banking industry: how effective is it?

The European banking industry is becoming increasingly consolidated as banks engage in domestic and cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) activities. Due to cultural differences in cross-border consolidations, the benefits of domestic and cross-border consolidations are likely to differ. This paper examines the effectiveness of merger processes, with a detailed analysis of both domestic and cross-border consolidations in Europe from 1998 to 2004. Effectiveness is measured via several criteria: improvement in costs, return on assets (ROA), and return on equity (ROE). To analyze potential cost efficiency improvement, we use a stochastic cost frontier approach. The same methodology is used for ROA and ROE to estimate efficiency in profitability. Finally, considering cross-border mergers as a form of entry, we carry out an analysis of the entry effect in response to the performance and profitability of the incumbent market participants. Results show that mergers in the European banking industry have been effective. Although domestic M&As are more common than cross-border M&As, banks involved in cross-border M&As are more efficient. Moreover, cross-border merged banks seem to outperform incumbent banks

An empirical study of stochastic DEA and financial performance in the case of the Turkish commercial banking industry

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:3597.94815(no 01/16) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo