Banking cost or X-efficiency is dependent upon the frontier analysis method used to measure the efficient frontier. Parametric methods require estimation of a composite error model where the bank's efficiency parameter is a portion of the bank's deviation from the cost frontier of the banking...

The relative cost efficiency of the mutual versus stock forms of ownership for thrifts has been a relevant issue in an era of deregulation and competition in the financial services industry. In this study Bayesian-based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) re-sampling methods are used to solve a...

Option market prices have often been regarded as a window on investor sentiment about the future price behavior of the underlying asset. Such prices can be very different from model prices and have long been noted by implied volatility plots revealing “smiles” or “smirks”. In this paper...