Bank consolidation is a global phenomenon that may enhance stakeholders' value if managers do not sacrifice value to build empires. We find strong evidence of managerial entrenchment at U.S. bank holding companies that have higher levels of managerial ownership, better growth opportunities,...

The authors analyze the potential competitive effects of the proposed Basel II capital regulations on U.S. bank credit card lending. They find that bank issuers operating under Basel II will face higher regulatory capital minimums than Basel I banks, with differences due to the way the two...

Bank consolidation is a global phenomenon that may enhance stakeholders value if managers do not sacrifice value to build empires. We find strong evidence of managerial entrenchment at U.S. bank holding companies that have higher levels of managerial ownership, better growth opportunities,...

The authors argue for a shift in the focus of modeling production from the traditional assumptions of profit maximization and cost minimization to a more general assumption of managerial utility maximization that can incorporate risk incentives into the analysis of production and recover...

An important question for bank regulatory policy is whether supervisory examinations of large commercial banking firms - institutions that are already actively followed by many investors and their private sector agents - produce useful information that is not already reflected in market prices....

Nationally chartered banks will be allowed to branch across state lines beginning June 1, 1997. Whether they will depends on their assessment of the profitability of such a delivery system for their services, and on their preferences regarding risk and return. We investigate the probable effect...

An important question for bank regulatory policy is whether supervisory examinations of large commercial banking firms - institutions that are already actively followed by many investors and their private sector agents - produce useful information that is not already reflected in market prices....

In this paper we use credit rating data from two Swedish banks to elicit evidence on these banks' loan monitoring ability. We do so by comparing the ability of bank ratings to predict loan defaults relative to that of public ratings from the Swedish credit bureau. We test the banks' abilility to...

The authors provide evidence that transactions accounts help financial intermediaries monitor borrowers by offering lenders a continuous stream of data on borrowers' account balances. This information is most readily available to commercial banks, but other intermediaries, such as finance...