Returns to Retail Banking and Payments

The present paper examines the fundamental relationship between the country-level infrastructure of the retail payment market and overall bank performance. Using data from across 27 European markets over the period 2000–07, the results confirm that the performance of banks in countries with more developed retail payment service markets is better. This relationship is stronger in countries with a relatively high adoption of retail payment transaction technologies. Retail payment transaction technology itself can also improve bank performance, and evidence shows that heterogeneity in retail payment instruments is associated with enhanced bank performance. Similarly, higher usage of electronic retail payment instruments seems to stimulate banking business. We also show that retail payment services have a more significant impact on savings and cooperative bank performance, although they have a positive influence on the performance of commercial banks as well. Additionally, the findings reveal that the impact of retail services on bank performance is more pronounced through fee income, although their impact through interest income is also positive. Finally, an effective payment service market is found to be associated with higher bank stability. Our findings are robust to different regression specifications.     

Measurement Entering the 21st Century: A Clear or Blocked Road Ahead?

While progress has been made in rendering financial statements more relevant by the inclusion of current value information, a piecemeal standard-by-standard approach has resulted in a lack of consistency in the specification of the valuation bases. At the international level there is disagreement between standard- setters on a unifjing concept, with some advocating value to the entity and others favouring fair value. The IASC has a high-level steering committee addressing the key issues related to financial performance and it will be interesting to see if it can facilitate the progressive swing to current value by providing a sensible framework within which to report value changes.     

保障金融安全的重要手段：银行监管关口前移

银行监管是对银行业金融机构监督和管理的简称。传统银行监管存在一些弊端,其中最明显的就是事后监管的问题。通过转变监管理念,将事后监管转为关口前移,施行前瞻性监管,会使银行监管水平提升到一个新的高度,确保金融安全。本文考察了传统银行监管存在的弊端,银行监管关口前移的重要意义,并就如何实现银行监管关口前移以保障金融安全提出了政策建议。     

走出危机:得经过多少地狱和炼狱

记得斯蒂芬·茨威格说过:一个新时代开始了,但是要达到这个新时代,还要经过多少地狱和炼狱啊!金融危机对中国的影响超出了人们的预期,甚至给人以大起大落的感觉。一方面美国次贷危机发展到金融风暴,已经很深地传导到中     

零售银行在中国：如何平衡发展与赢利——访罗兰贝格国际管理咨询公司副总裁及合伙人罗曼

当前国内各商业银行在公司业务方面的竞争已经日趋白热化,其增长的空间已经有限;同时,资本市场的发育将进一步增加企业在直接融资方面的比例;城镇居民的收入和储蓄水平持续上升;这些都促使各商业银行将零售业务作为未来发展的重点,零售银行的市场正经历高速的增长阶段。对于各家国内的商业银行来说,目前面临的一个重要问题是,在零售业务高速增长的同时如何保证其盈利性。本刊记者为此专访了罗兰贝格管理咨询公司副总裁罗曼先生。罗曼先生就零售银行业务及其在中国的发展发表了自己系统、全面的的阐述和分析。     

Electronic Commerce and the State Retail Sales Tax: A Challenge to American Federalism

Electronic commerce, by magnifying problems with the existing sales tax, has precipitated reexamination of basic precepts of fiscal federalism in the United States, not just taxation of remote sellers. This paper examines: key features of electronic commerce; the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the Commission it mandates; tax assignments in the United States; problems in assigning sales taxes to subnational governments; constitutional impediments to requiring remote vendors to collect sales and use taxes; tentative findings of the National Tax Association's project on taxation of electronic commerce; and implications of the current debate over taxation of electronic commerce for intergovernmental fiscal relations in the United States.     

Practitioners' Corner: Introduction to the Special Issue

This issue of the Journal of Financial Econometrics comprisespapers that were presented at the workshop "New Directions inFinancial Risk Management," held under the aegis of the Centerfor Financial Studies in Frankfurt on November 3–4, 2003.The scientific organizers of the conference were Frank     

Practitioners' Corner: Introduction to the Special Issue

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. The material in this volume is the result of a call for papersto the participants of the "Conference on Analysis of High-FrequencyFinancial Data and Market Microstructure" held in December 2003in Taipei, Taiwan. Jeffrey Russell and Ruey Tsay have actedas guest editors for this special issue, together with the editorsRené Garcia and Eric Renault. The availability of high-frequency data has spawned considerableliterature on volatility measurement and forecasting. The materialis mathematically delicate and perhaps "Practitioners’Corner" would be well advised to let the dust settle a bit tosee what emerges at the end of the day. On the other hand, thepractically minded may well be served by a good road map ofthe issues. So with only mild apology do we take up the cartographyof some difficult terrain. To fix ideas, let S(t) denote the price process of a . . . [Full Text of this Article]     

Retail investors exonerated: the case of the January effect

We dispel the belief that the January effect is due to retail investor trading. Previous studies suggest that retail investors, affected by behavioural biases and disproportionally invested in small capitalization stocks, are the source of the January effect. Furthermore, the literature regards retail investor trading and the tax‐loss selling hypothesis as essentially the same explanation. We separate tax implications and market capitalization to show that retail traders are not the cause of the January effect. Our study is an important direct test of whether retail trading causes market anomalies.     

依靠对称化：规避银行零售业务经营风险的路径

银行零售业务已经成为我国商业银行业务拓展的重要领域,随着我国商业银行零售业务的不断拓展,如何将零售业务经营的风险控制在最低限度已经摆到了各商业银行的议事日程.     

When it comes to the crunch: Retail investor decision-making during periods of market volatility

Attitude to risk questionnaires are widely used by financial advisors to recommend investments of appropriate risk levels to their clients. Yet the usefulness of this instrument to gauge how investors will react when faced with extreme volatility in the values of their assets remains untested. Using realistic scenarios and based on a large-scale survey in the UK, in this study we examine how the investing public reacts to actual portfolio losses. We find that conventional risk tolerance measures are inadequate for determining whether investors would ‘sell out’ or hold their portfolios in such circumstances. On the other hand, we find that past experience, emotions and personality characteristics, including measures of financial self-efficacy and extraversion, are significant predictors of investor reactions to market crashes.