Local Banking Market Frictions and Youth Crime: Evidence from Bank Failures

Journal of Financial Services Research - This paper examines the impact of local banking market frictions measured by bank failures on youth crime. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we...     

Evolution of Statistics in India

This is a brief history of the evolution of official and academic Statistics in India which focuses mainly on the period 1930 to 1960 but traces its origins in antiquity and recent history. We also comment on how Statistics has continued to evolve since the 1960's. This is a history of both institutions and people, who built and shaped them, and of ideas.     

The effect of CEO ownership on the information content of reported earnings

This paper examines the relation between capital market perceptions of earnings quality and CEO equity ownership. Using the earnings response coefficients (ERCs) from annual returns–earnings regressions as a proxy for investor perceptions of earnings quality, we find that ERCs first increase and then decline across higher levels of CEO ownership with an inflection point around 25% ownership. Using analyst behavior as another proxy for the perceptions of financial analysts, we find that earnings forecasts are more accurate as ownership increases, but once ownership levels reach about 25%, accuracy declines with further increases in ownership. Forecast dispersion, forecast revision volatility, and analyst following decline and then increase across increasing levels of CEO ownership. Our results suggest that, for low levels of CEO ownership, earnings are perceived as being more informative about future firm performance as ownership increases. However, once ownership levels are high, earnings are perceived as being less informative with further increases in ownership.     

Ownership,evergreening and crisis: an analysis of bank–firm relationships in India

Employing data on publicly listed firms for 1995–2012, the article examines the behaviour of bank lending and interest cost and how it evolved during the crisis. The evidence suggests that high-Non-performing Loans (NPL) main banks raised their lending and lowered lending rates during the crisis, especially to risky, low-profit firms, indicative of a flight from quality. A disaggregation of the possible reasons for the flight from quality provides evidence in favour of short-termism behaviour by banks. The analysis also provides evidence in support of tunnelling by risky firms, which became amplified during the crisis. The net effect of these developments was a perceptible reduction in overall employment.     

Everyday Lives in Vertical Neighbourhoods: Exploring Bangladeshi Residential Spaces in Toronto's Inner Suburbs

In the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), almost a third of the total housing stock is comprised of high‐rise apartment buildings. Not only do most new immigrants reside in these structures upon arrival, they often continue living here for a prolonged period, for a variety of interrelated economic and psychological reasons. It is therefore important to ask: How do these vertical structures affect the life worlds of the residents? What functions do these spaces perform? How do immigrants develop attachments to these spaces, and how do they make them their own? By drawing upon the experiences of 30 Bangladeshi immigrant households in Toronto's inner suburbs, I demonstrate that even though these vertical stacks are not conducive to frequent social interaction by design, the residents variously transform such functional spaces into unique ‘Bengali’ neighbourhoods that are filled with ambivalent feelings of hope and despair, imaginations of the future, becoming a place they can call home away from home.     

Why is it a man’s world,after all? Women on bank boards in India

Employing information on all publicly listed Indian banks covering the period 2003–2012, the study explores whether gender diversity impacts bank behaviour. The evidence suggests that the value addition to banks from the induction of women on their boards of directors is not compelling, although executive women directors enhance bank stability. Looking across ownership, the evidence suggests that gender diversity in state-owned banks enhances stability, but at the cost of lower profitability.