Delivering deposit services: ATMs versus branches

Automated tellers ; Branch banks

Productivity in banking and effects from deregulation

Over the last decade, banking productivity growth has been quite low, between 0.60 to –0.07 percent a year. Deregulation has served to raise banking costs but not measured output. Consumers may have benefited, but banks have not.Productivity ; Banks and banking

The economics of electronic benefit transfer payments

Electronic funds transfers

Why do estimates of bank scale economies differ?

A number of public policy issues turn on whether or not there are scale economies in commercial banking. This paper examines why empirical tests in this area have yielded differing results. Sorting out the different methodological approaches enables us to develop general conclusions on the size and significance of scale economies in banking.Economies of scale ; Banks and banking - Costs ; Bank size

Dispersion behavior of torsional guided waves in a small diameter steel gas pipe

Condition monitoring of gas pipes has been an important issue for gas companies. Failure to accurately identify condition of gas pipes result in numerous problems. Also, producing a condition monitoring system for buried pipelines is challenging. Small pipes (with diameters less than 50 mm) are considered here as most of the literature focuses on larger pipes. Guided wave theory will be introduced alongside a numerical simulation of the relevant dispersion curves of the system. This paper investigates the feasibility of using torsional guided waves for inspecting defects in buried pipes with small diameters. The pipes are assumed to be lossless and hence the effect of attenuation is ignored in the calculations. Upon finding the theoretical guided wave characteristics, experiments were conducted to see if the aim could be achieved in a realistic scenario. A steel pipe with a diameter of 34 mm and wall thickness of 5.5 mm is considered. High reverberation levels at high frequency propagations due to mode conversion are studied. Having only a limited number of transducers could be a reason for high reverberation at high frequencies

Efficiency of Financial Institutions: International Survey and Directions for Future Research

This paper surveys 130 studies that apply frontier efficiency analysis to financial institutions in 21 countries. The primary goals are to summarize and critically review empirical estimates of financial institution efficiency and to attempt to arrive at a consensus view. We find that the various efficiency methods do not necessarily yield consistent results and suggest some ways that these methods might be improved to bring about findings that are more consistent, accurate, and useful. Secondary goals are to address the implications of efficiency results for financial institutions in the areas of government policy, research, and managerial performance. Areas needing additional research are also outlined.

Non-equilibrium mechanics and dynamics of motor activated gels

The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile stresses. Using this model we show how motor activity can dramatically increase the network's bulk elastic moduli. We also show how motor binding kinetics naturally leads to enhanced low-frequency stress fluctuations that result in non-equilibrium diffusive motion within an elastic network, as seen in recent \emph{in vitro} and \emph{in vivo} experiments.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure