Economies of scale and scope in French banking and savings institutions

In this study, we analyze the costs incurred by French commercial banks and savings institutions. One of the main distinctions between these two types of financial entities concerns management costs, which are higher for commercial bank demand deposits than for the savings institutions' tax-free livret A passbook accounts. Taking this differential into consideration by constructing separate models based on different principles, we find that the average overall and operating costs of the savings institutions are half those of commercial banks. As regards operating costs, small savings institutions enjoy a significant cost advantage over small commercial banks, but this cost advantage is smaller when one compares the performance of large savings institutions to the large banks. The results of our econometric estimates suggest a possible explanation, as we find increasing returns to scale for the banks and diminishing returns for the savings institutions. The value of the returns-to-scope parameter at the mean point appears to indicate a complementarity between certain pairs of outputs. Therefore, ouptut diversification appears to have a positive impact on cost levels for both savings institutions and commercial banks; while institution size, measured by the total assets, has a different impact in these two industries.     

Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions

Identifying the value orientations of subjects participating in market or non-market decisions by having them participate in a ring game may be helpful in understanding the behaviour of these subjects. This experiment presents the results of changes in the centre and the radius of a value orientations ring in an attempt to discover if the measured value orientations exhibit income or displacement effects. Neither significant income effects nor displacement effects are identified. An external validity check with a voluntary contribution game provides evidence that value orientations from rings centred around the origin of the decision-space explain significant portions of voluntary contributions while value orientations from displaced rings do not.     

Credit risk,owner liability,and bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis

We relate credit risk and owners’ personal guarantees to bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis. The findings, which remain robust to reverse causality, show that firms rated as low risk, with a strong relationship with the bank, whose owners provided personal guarantees and with large loan sizes obtained longer maturities. Banks with larger nonperforming loans provided loans with shorter maturities. Firms with low‐ and high‐risk ratings that provided owners’ personal guarantees obtained longer maturities. These findings shed additional light on the relationship between risk and loan maturities and the role of personal guarantees in reducing information asymmetries.     

Impact of Personal and Situational Factors on Taxpayer Compliance: An Experimental Analysis

This study used a laboratory experiment with monetary incentives to test the impact of three personal factors (moral reasoning, value orientation and risk preference), and three situational factors (the presence/absence of audits, tax inequity, and peer reporting behavior), while controlling for the impact of other demographic characteristics, on tax compliance. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) reveals that all the main effects analyzed are statistically significant and robustly influence tax compliance behavior. These results highlight the importance of obtaining a proper understanding of these factors for developing effective policies for increasing the level of compliance, and indicate that standard enforcement polices based on punishment alone should be supplemented by an information system that would acquaint tax payers with the compliance level of other tax payers; reinforce the concept of fairness of the tax system among tax payers; and develop programs that enhance and appeal to a taxpayer's moral conscience and reinforce social cohesion.     

Does having more children increase the likelihood of parental smoking? Evidence from Vietnam

Evidence has shown that parental smoking can cause health problems for children. It might be expected that parents who are aware of the harmful effects of second-hand smoke will reduce their smoking, especially as they have more children. However, based on instrumental variable regressions using data from the 2006 and 2008 Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys, we find a strongly positive and significant effect of the number of children on the probability of tobacco smoking in households in Vietnam. An additional child increases the probability of tobacco consumption in the household by approximately 15%. These findings imply low levels of awareness of the harmful effects of second-hand smoke on children’s health in Vietnam, and indicate the need for policy action to disseminate knowledge on the harmful effects of smoking.     

Destination management organizations and destination marketing: adopting the business model of e-portals in engaging travel agents

ABSTRACT

Destination management organizations (DMOs) have an important role in engaging stakeholders in collaboration. Collaborating with stakeholders is useful for both stakeholders and destinations. However, it takes time and needs rigorous coordination to avoid conflicts with stakeholders. This study measures travel agencies’ attitudes towards engaging in online collaboration with DMOs for marketing purposes. It incorporates collaboration and technology acceptance models to predict the attitudes and intentions of travel agents using structural equation modeling. Data were collected from travel agents in Cairo, Egypt, using the random sample technique. This study will be useful for travel and tourism stakeholders and governmental marketing bodies.     

Islamic tourism: an empirical examination of travel motivation and satisfaction in Malaysia

The objectives of this study are to test the relationship between tourism motivations and tourist satisfaction, and to test how ‘Religion’ moderates the relationship. The variable ‘Religion’ is represented by the availability of Islamic norms and practices relevant to tourism at the destination. The results of the partial least square indicate that tourism motivations are significantly and positively related to tourist satisfaction. The results also showed that Religion significantly moderates the relationship between pull motivation and tourist satisfaction. However, the moderating effect of Religion on the relationship between push motivation and tourist satisfaction was not supported.     

Measuring and explaining the efficiencies of the United Arab Emirates banking system

Using newly collected data from a survey distributed to all banks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this article measures economic efficiency in the banking industry, namely allocative, technical, pure technical and scale efficiency. Employing a nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, the study estimates the efficiency for a cross section of the UAE banks in 2004. The results indicate that the dominant source of inefficiency in the UAE banking is stemming from allocative inefficiency rather than technical inefficiency. Furthermore, the main source of the relatively small size, technical inefficiency in the UAE banking industry is not the scale inefficiency but rather pure technical inefficiency. The results further indicate that the UAE banks are able to use their input resources more efficiently when they have more branches, and that newer banks are performing better than older banks on average. Moreover, the results also show that short experiences of employees affect efficiencies negatively and government ownership tends to reduce efficiency (as the government shares increase in the bank, the efficiency scores get lower). Finally, the most interesting results have to do with finding higher average efficiencies in banks that employ more women, more managers and less national citizens of the UAE.