Competition, Growth, and Performance in the Banking Industry

This paper analyzes competition, growth, and performance in the banking industry. First, we analyze the relationship between market structure and the performance of the banking industry. Furthermore, we test hypotheses on whether size matters for individual banks' profit performance. As such, we use extreme bounds stability analysis and a stability analysis in line with Sala-i-Martin (1997) to test for the reliability of the regression outcomes. It turns out that bank profits are inversely related to the amount of bank assets and are positively associated with the amount of tier-one bank capital.Bank Competition, Bank Performance, Bank Size, International Banking

Are internet firms different? : evidence from insider trading

This study investigates whether the information content of insider transactions, with a focus on sell transactions, is different for high growth, high volatility Internet-based firms. Prior research on more “traditional” firms has found a small, but significant negative abnormal return with insider sells, which points to an association of insider sells with negative information about the firm by outsiders. We employ several models to examine over 1,000 inside transactions for more than 100 NETDEX firms to find that for Internet firms, insider sells are not followed by a significant negative abnormal return. Firm size effects differ between the different methods employed. In conclusion, it appears that while insider sales in traditional firms are motivated by information asymmetry reason, insider sales in Internet firms are not. We conclude that Internet firms are different indeed.

Joint default probabilities and country risk

The assessment of country risk is of crucial importance for both developing countries and international lenders and investors. Many existing country risk approaches are opaque and heavily rely on subjective choices. In general, they lack a theoretical basis. To assess country risk, we use the Merton model in which a loan defaults if the value of a firm’s assets falls below the amount due to the loan. In a portfolio context, this implies that default correlations warrant the utmost attention. We find that country default correlations are significant and low. Furthermore, joint defaults tend to be clustered in Latin American and Eastern European transition countries, but not in Asia.

Financial development and the transmission of monetary shocks

We investigate whether the financial system dampens or exacerbates monetary shocks of inflation uncertainty to the economy. Our GMM-estimates for 88 countries over a period of 25 years show that inflation uncertainty has a positive and significant impact on the volatility of economic growth. More importantly, we find that financial development dampens the negative effects of inflation uncertainty on the volatility of economic growth. This confirms the importance of a well-developed financial sector.

Falling oil prices should help Europe’s ailing economies, but the wider implications of the price drop remain to be seen

How will the drop in oil prices affect European economies? As Bert Scholtens writes, the general expectation is that a fall in oil prices should help economic growth across Europe, but there are nevertheless a number of key factors which play an important role in how the price feeds into individual economies. It is also unclear what impact the oil price will have in other areas, such as attempts to transition to renewable energy