This study investigates the impact of the bank-firm relationship on IPO underpricing in China, an emerging economy with a bank-dominated financial system. With loan data from 902 IPO firms from 2004 to 2011, we document that the bank-firm relationship reduces the degree of IPO underpricing. Both...

The inability of most bank merger studies to control for hidden bailouts may lead to biased results. In this study, we employ a unique data set of approximately 1,000 mergers to analyze the determinants of bank mergers. We use data on the regulatory intervention history to distinguish between...

In this paper, we show the importance of accounting for heterogeneity among sample firms in stochastic frontier analysis. For a fairly homogenous sample of German savings and cooperative banks, we analyze how alternative theoretical assumptions regarding the nature of heterogeneity can be...

Two alternatives research hypotheses concerning how small business lending affects bank profitability are tested. The specialization hypothesis argues for higher profitability than other banks due to increased focus on small business lending, whereas the diversification hypothesis asserts that...