This paper investigates the effects of focus versus diversification on bank performance using data on Chinese banks during the 1996-2006 period. We construct a new measure, economies of diversi-fication, and compare the results to those of the more conventional focus indices, which are based on...

Conventional wisdom in banking argues that diversification tends to reduce bank risk and improve performance, but the recent financial crisis suggests that aggressive diversification strategies may have resulted in increased risk taking and poor performance. This paper addresses this important...

China employs a unique foreign bank entry model. Instead of allowing full foreign control of domestic banks, foreign investors are only permitted to be involved in the local banks as minority shareholders. At the same time, foreign strategic investors are expected to commit to bank corporate...

This study investigates the effectiveness of government intervention in rescuing bearish markets in a transition economy. Focusing on a pre- and a post-intervention period, the findings reveal that government intervention successfully rescued bearish markets in China and led to a fundamental...

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...

The Central European banking industry is dominated by foreign-owned banks. During the recent crisis, for the first time since the transition, foreign parent companies were frequently in a worse financial condition than their subsidiaries. This situation created a unique opportunity to study new...

This study investigates the relationship between politically connected firms and their access to bank financing in a post-communist eras in Poland. Overall, it finds that "recent" political connections do influence access to bank financing and the value of such connections increased during the...

Modern banking institutions were virtually non-existent in the planned economies of cen-tral Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the early transition period, banking sectors be-gan to develop during several years of macroeconomic decline and turbulence accompa-nied by repeated bank crises....

​The dynamic banking reforms of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) following the collapse of the Soviet Union provide an ideal research setting for examining the causal effect of institutional development on financial reporting. Using five earnings quality measures, we consistently find that...

This paper provides an empirical examination of the regional banking structures in China and their effects on entrepreneurial activity. Using a panel of 27 provinces and four directly controlled municipalities from 1997 through 2008, we find that the presence of large banking institutions...