Intra- and inter-country bank branch assessment using DEA

Increasingly globalized financial markets with considerable activity in the multinational sector have created the need to understand inter-country bank branch performance. This topic is relatively unstudied, primarily due to the immense difficulty encountered in gathering reliable data. Fortunately, we have been able to obtain data on a group of banks operating in one geographical market area, but in different countries. In this paper we critically assess bank branch profitability and productivity in seven national branch networks owned and operated by a multi-national financial services corporation. The corporate head office (owner) imposes its management philosophy equally on all of its subsidiaries, thus removing executive managerial and corporate disparity. Results suggest that countries in which branch performance is quite consistent amongst domestic branches are less productive and less profitable when compared to other countries that have more disparity in their efficiency scores. In addition, we discovered that, surprisingly, branches do not have to be productive in order to be profitable and this led us to somewhat of a major breakthrough in inter-country branch analysis. Significant managerial advice may be derived from these results vis-à-vis trans-national benchmarking and opportunity for performance improvements both at the branch level and nationally as well.

Implications of Basel II for Different Bank Ownership Patterns in Europe

This paper explains that Basel II has different implications for stakeholder-owned (mutual) and stockholder banks in the European Union. Some strategic paths for stakeholder-owned banks are proposed as a response to the Stockholder Value Maximization goals Basel II implicitly advances. Even though empirical evidence indicates that capital strength and risk-taking exposures do not differ across bank ownership structures, SME lending and other characteristic specializations of stakeholder banks promise to generate high capital charges. However, improved corporate-governance practices and cooperative securitization and risk-management activities can reduce the compliance costs and risk-taking constraints mutual banks might experience from shifting to a Stakeholder Value Maximization Model. For all EU banks irrespective of their ownership structure, the analysis stresses that establishing an incentive-compatible cross-country safety-net scheme poses a critical challenge.

我国网络银行风险预期的传导机制分析

案件风险及所引致的不安全预期广泛传导,已成为我国网络银行发展的重要障碍,本文通过几个简单的模型分析案件风险及预期传导机制,并对阻断风险预期的传导、缩小风险影响提出对策建议。     

The Global Fight against Corruption: A Foucaultian, Virtues-Ethics Framing

This paper extends the discussion of business ethics by examining the issue of corruption, its definition, the solutions being proposed for dealing with it, and the ethical perspectives underpinning these proposals. The paper’s findings are based on a review of association, think-tank, and academic reports, books, and papers dealing with the topic of corruption, as well as the pronouncements, websites, and position papers of a number of important global organizations active in the fight. These organizations include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Transparency International, USAID, the United Nations, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Organization of American States, and the Council of Europe. Our discussion departs from prior analyses by adopting a Foucaultian theoretical framing and by incorporating insights found in the virtue ethics literature. Implications are provided for international business organizations.     

What does “entrepreneurship” data <Emphasis Type="Italic">really</Emphasis> show?

In this paper, we compare two datasets designed to measure entrepreneurship: The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) dataset and the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey (WBGES) dataset. We find a number of important differences when the data are compared. First, GEM data tend to report significantly higher levels of early stage entrepreneurship in developing economies than do the World Bank business entry data, while the World Bank business entry data tend to be higher than GEM data for developed countries. Second, we find that the magnitude of the difference between the datasets across countries is related to the local institutional and environmental conditions for entrepreneurs, after controlling for levels of economic development. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs in developed countries have greater ease and incentives to incorporate, both for the benefits of greater access to formal financing and labor contracts, as well as for tax and other purposes not directly related to business activities.

The Effect of Business Regulations on Nascent and Young Business Entrepreneurship

We examine the relationship, across 39 countries, between regulation and entrepreneurship using a new two-equation model. We find the minimum capital requirement required to start a business lowers entrepreneurship rates across countries, as do labour market regulations. However the administrative considerations of starting a business – such as the time, the cost, or the number of procedures required – are unrelated to the formation rate of either nascent or young businesses. Given the explicit link made by Djankov et al. [Djankov et al. 2002, ‹The Regulation of Entry’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(1), 1–37] between the speed and ease with which businesses may be established in a country and its economic performance – and the enthusiasm with which this link has been grasped by European Union policy makers – our findings imply this link needs reconsidering. Prepared for: Small Business Economics (2007), Special issue GEM conference 2005     

中国股市、银行与经济增长

通过利用经济增长指标、股市指标和金融发展水平指标,对中国股市、银行业和宏观经济数据进行实证研究发现:我国银行业发展水平和贷款率指标,对于人均实际的GDP增长具有一定的正向推动关系,而且成交额比率与人均实际GDP的增长和储蓄存款存在着反向作用。从而得出的结论是,我国银行业的发展水平对宏观经济的影响要远远强于股市的影响作用。     

信用衍生品在我国商业银行信用风险管理中的应用

我国商业银行针对其面临最重要的风险之一的信用风险采取的信用风险管理方式长期以传统模式为主,这种方式较为被动,缺少积极性及动态有效性。该种方式的缺陷在经济全球化的形势下显得更为严峻,而信用衍生品作为能够有效转移信用风险的创新产品,很有须要将其引进到信用风险管理中。在学习与借鉴前人关于信用衍生品在银行信用风险管理应用的经验上,运用了实证分析方法,对银行信用资产质量与信用衍生品交易量的关系作出了研究,得出了信用衍生品在一定程度上对于降低或转移商业银行信用风险产生了作用,进而保证了信用资产质量的结论,结合了信用衍生品在我国实际的发展现状与条件,提出了该产品在我国商业银行信用风险管理中运用的建议。     

Market discipline in the Central American banking system

The hypothesis of market discipline is empirically verified in the Central American banking system. A contrast is carried out on whether the riskier banks (the ones with the worst banking fundamentals) pay higher interest rates and receive smaller amounts in deposits. The generalized method of moments is used for dynamic panel data models (the SYS GMM estimator), as well as a sample of 30 banks from six Central American countries during the 2008–2012 period. Unlike the majority of the previous empirical literature, specifically for developed countries, no evidence of market discipline was found in Central America. The results are robust for several indicators of the banking fundamentals for purposes of internal demand of bank capital, and for other econometric models. These findings indicate weaknesses in the bank policy regarding the disclosure of information.     

Accounting Quality and Loan Pricing: The Effect of Cross-country Differences in Legal Enforcement

This study examines whether the strength of legal enforcement at the country level plays a role in the value-relevance of accounting quality for loan pricing determination, using an international sample of firms reporting under IFRS. The underlying hypothesis is that stronger vs. weaker enforcement should affect the informativeness of financial statements, due to their increased credibility, and thus results in a stronger influence of accounting quality on loan pricing, in case this information is considered more reliable by potential lenders. Evidence indicates that accounting quality is consequential for the determination of loan spread only in combination with the level of legal enforcement, and this only holds for the countries with stronger legal enforcement. This evidence indicates that financial statement quality information is value-relevant and has a significant impact on the determination of loan pricing only if this information is considered to be credible enough by loan providers in a country, and this is the case when legal enforcement is stronger.