Environmental Factors Affecting Hong Kong Banking: A Post-Asian Financial Crisis Efficiency Analysis

Within the banking efficiency analysis literature there is a dearth of studies which have considered how banks have ‘survived’ the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Considering the profound changes that have occurred in the region’s financial systems since then, such an analysis is both timely and warranted. This paper examines the evolution of Hong Kong’s banking industry’s efficiency and its macroeconomic determinants through the prism of two alternative approaches to banking production based on the intermediation and services-producing goals of bank management over the post-crisis period. Within this research strategy we employ Tone’s (2001) Slacks-Based Model (SBM) combining it with recent bootstrapping techniques, namely the non-parametric truncated regression analysis suggested by Simar and Wilson (2007) and Simar and Zelenyuk’s (2007) group-wise heterogeneous sub-sampling approach. We find that there was a significant negative effect on Hong Kong bank efficiency in 2001, which we ascribe to the fallout from the terrorist attacks in America in 9/11 and to the completion of deposit rate deregulation that year. However, post 2001 most banks have reported a steady increase in efficiency leading to a better ‘intermediation’ and ‘production’ of activities than in the base year of 2000, with the SARS epidemic having surprisingly little effect in 2003. It was also interesting to find that the smaller banks were more efficient than the larger banks, but the latter were also able to enjoy economies of scale. This size factor was linked to the exportability of financial services. Other environmental factors found to be significantly impacting on bank efficiency were private consumption and housing rent.Finance and Banking; Productivity; Efficiency.

Accounting for environmental factors, bias and negative numbers in efficiency estimation: A bootstrapping application to the Hong Kong banking sector

This paper examines the evolution of Hong Kong’s banking industry’s technical efficiency, and its macroeconomic determinants, during the period 2000-2006 through the prism of two alternative approaches to efficiency estimation, namely the intermediation and production approaches. Using a modified (Sharp, Meng and Liu, 2006) slacks-based model (Tone, 2001), and purging the efficiency estimates for random errors (Simar and Zelenyuk, 2007) , we firstly analyse the trends in bank efficiency. We then identify the ‘environmental’ factors that significantly affect the efficiency scores using an adaptation (Kenjegalieva et al. 2009) of the truncated regression approach suggested by Simar and Wilson. 2007). The first part of the analysis reveals that the Hong Kong banking industry suffered a severe downturn in estimated technical efficiency during 2001. It subsequently recovered, posting average efficiency scores of 92 per cent and 85 percent under the intermediation and production approaches respectively by the end of 2006. As for the sub-group analysis, commercial banks are, on average, shown to be the most efficient operators, while the investment bank group are shown to be the least efficient. Finally, with respect to the truncated regression analysis, the results suggest that smaller banks are more efficient than their larger counterparts, although larger banks are still able to enjoy gains from scale economies and benefit from the export of financial services. Moreover, private housing rent and the net export of goods and services are found to be negatively correlated with bank efficiency, while private consumption is shown to be positively correlated.Hong Kong Banks; DEA; Slacks; Environmental factors, Negative numbers; Bias.

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High-temperature scaling limit for directed polymers on a hierarchical lattice with bond disorder

Diamond "lattices" are sequences of recursively-defined graphs that provide a network of directed pathways between two fixed root nodes, $A$ and $B$. The construction recipe for diamond graphs depends on a branching number $b\in \mathbb{N}$ and a segmenting number $s\in \mathbb{N}$, for which a larger value of the ratio $s/b$ intuitively corresponds to more opportunities for intersections between two randomly chosen paths. By attaching i.i.d. random variables to the bonds of the graphs, I construct a random Gibbs measure on the set of directed paths by assigning each path an "energy" given by summing the random variables along the path. For the case $b=s$, I propose a scaling regime in which the temperature grows along with the number of hierarchical layers of the graphs, and the partition function (the normalization factor of the Gibbs measure) appears to converge in law. I prove that all of the positive integer moments of the partition function converge in this limiting regime. The motivation of this work is to prove a functional limit theorem that is analogous to a previous result obtained in the $b<s$ case.Comment: 28 pages, 1 figur

Eigenvalue bounds for a class of singular potentials in N dimensions

The eigenvalue bounds obtained earlier [J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 31 (1998) 963] for smooth transformations of the form V(x) = g(x^2) + f(1/x^2) are extended to N-dimensions. In particular a simple formula is derived which bounds the eigenvalues for the spiked harmonic oscillator potential V(x) = x^2 + lambda/x^alpha, alpha > 0, lambda > 0, and is valid for all discrete eigenvalues, arbitrary angular momentum ell, and spatial dimension N.Comment: 10 pages (plain tex with 2 ps figures). J.Phys.A:Math.Gen.(In Press

Recent developments in the application of risk analysis to waste technologies.

The European waste sector is undergoing a period of unprecedented change driven by business consolidation, new legislation and heightened public and government scrutiny. One feature is the transition of the sector towards a process industry with increased pre-treatment of wastes prior to the disposal of residues and the co-location of technologies at single sites, often also for resource recovery and residuals management. Waste technologies such as in-vessel composting, the thermal treatment of clinical waste, the stabilisation of hazardous wastes, biomass gasification, sludge combustion and the use of wastes as fuel, present operators and regulators with new challenges as to their safe and environmentally responsible operation. A second feature of recent change is an increased regulatory emphasis on public and ecosystem health and the need for assessments of risk to and from waste installations. Public confidence in waste management, secured in part through enforcement of the planning and permitting regimes and sound operational performance, is central to establishing the infrastructure of new waste technologies. Well-informed risk management plays a critical role. We discuss recent developments in risk analysis within the sector and the future needs of risk analysis that are required to respond to the new waste and resource management agenda

Memories for Life: A Review of the Science and Technology

This paper discusses scientific, social and technological aspects of memory. Recent developments in our understanding of memory processes and mechanisms, and their digital implementation, have placed the encoding, storage, management and retrieval of information at the forefront of several fields of research. At the same time, the divisions between the biological, physical and the digital worlds seem to be dissolving. Hence opportunities for interdisciplinary research into memory are being created, between the life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences. Such research may benefit from immediate application into information management technology as a testbed. The paper describes one initiative, Memories for Life, as a potential common problem space for the various interested disciplines

Takeoff/approach noise for a model counterrotation propeller with a forward-swept upstream rotor

A scale model of a counterrotating propeller with forward-swept blades in the forward rotor and aft-swept blades in the aft rotor (designated F39/A31) has been tested in the NASA Lewis 9- by 15-Foot Anechoic Wind Tunnel. This paper presents aeroacoustic results at a takeoff/approach condition of Mach 0.20. Laser Doppler velocimeter results taken in a plane between the two rotors are also included to quantify the interaction flow field. The intention of the forward-swept design is to reduce the magnitude of the forward rotor tip vortex and/or wakes which impinge on the aft rotor, thus lowering the interaction tone levels. A reference model propeller (designated F31/A31), having aft-swept blades in both rotors, was also tested. Aeroelastic performance of the F39/A31 propeller was disappointing. The forward rotor tip region tended to untwist toward higher effective blade angles under load. The forward rotor also exhibited steady state blade flutter at speeds and loadings well below the design condition. The noise results, based on sideline acoustic data, show that the interaction tone levels were up to 8 dB higher with the forward-swept design compared to those for the reference propeller at similar operating conditions, with these tone level differences extending down to lower propeller speeds where flutter did not occur. These acoustic results are for a poorly-performing forward-swept propeller. It is quite possible that a properly-designed forward-swept propeller would exhibit substantial interaction tone level reductions

A Deep Multicolor Survey I. Imaging Observations and Catalog of Stellar Objects

We have used the KPNO 4-meter Mayall telescope to image 0.83 square degrees of sky in six fields at high galactic latitude in six filters spanning 3000-10000\AA\ to magnitude limits ranging from 22.1 to 23.8. We have assembled a catalog of 21,375 stellar objects detected in the fields for use primarily in conducting a multicolor search for quasars. This paper describes the data reduction techniques used on the CCD data, the methods used to construct the stellar object catalog, and the simulations performed to understand its completeness and contamination.Comment: To Appear in ApJ Supplement, 1996. 168k uuencoded gunzipped tarred tex file (requires aas2pp4.sty and tighten.sty) and 4 PostScript figures. Also available at http://astro.as.arizona.edu/~pathall/astro.html#preprint