The present paper explores issues surrounding multilateral interchange fees (MIFs) in payment card markets from various angles. The Eurosystem’s public stance on interchange fees is neutral. However, the Eurosystem takes a keen interest in facilitating a constructive dialogue among the...

The European Central Bank (ECB) carried out a study of the social and private costs of different payment instruments with the participation of 13 national central banks in the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). It shows that the costs to society of providing retail payment services are...

Financial integration in some segments of the financial markets started to deteriorate during the recent period of economic turmoil in Europe. This paper examines whether this phenomenon also holds true for the European retail payments market. In comparison with other segments of the financial...

Retail payment markets have been developing rapidly throughout the last decade. In Europe a number of legal and regulatory measures have been adopted with the aim of achieving an integrated single market for payments. In other regions (e.g. Australia, Canada and the United States) retail...

We investigate how borrowers corporate governance influences bank loan contracting terms in emerging markets and how this relation varies across countries with different country-level governance. We find that borrowers with stronger corporate governance obtain favorable contracting terms with...

This paper examines what institutional and bank-specific factors determine bank stock price synchronicity. Using data on 37 countries from 1996-2007, we find that bank stocks are more aligned with the whole market (1) during the financial crisis; (2) in countries that have more credit provided...

Better developed legal and political institutions result in greater availability of reliable firm-specific information. When stock prices reflect more firm-specific information there will be less stock price synchronicity. This paper traces the experience of China, an economy undergoing dramatic...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how firms’ disclosure standards influence the syndicated loan market, with an emphasis on loan syndicate structure and composition. Design/methodology/approach – To empirically investigate the effects of corporate disclosure on bank loan...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to fill this void in the existing literature and investigate how firms’ disclosure policies influence bank loan contracting in emerging markets after controlling for the influence of borrowers’ private information obtained by banks. Furthermore, the...