The recent period of crisis in credit markets has highlighted the crucial role of bank risk taking. Our paper assesses the inter-temporal relationships among bank efficiency, capital and bank risk-taking in the EU-26 commercial banking industry between 1995 and 2007. Our results support the bad...

The 2007–2010 financial crisis has hit a variety of countries asymmetrically. The case of Spain is particularly illustrative as it exemplifies in a vivid manner most of the core issues largely responsible for the crisis. This country experienced a pronounced housing bubble partly funded via...

We investigate the risk-taking channel of monetary policy at the global level using a comprehensive database of listed banks. Our sample includes quarterly information for all listed banks operating in the European Union (EU15) and the United States during and prior to the period of the...

The recent financial crisis has shown that the stability of the investment banking industry plays a key role for the soundness of the financial system as a whole. Do high competition and/or cost inefficiencies increase investment banks' insolvency (and capital) risks? Or, conversely, do...

Investment banks' core functions expose them to a wide array of risks. This paper analyses cost and profit efficiency for a sample of investment banks for the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US) and Switzerland prior to the recent financial crisis. We follow Coelli et...