In the early 1990s, a widely-shared opinion among scholars and practitioners was that the importance of physical proximity between banks and borrowers would be doomed to drastically decrease over time and, put in extreme terms, the end of banking geography would become a real possibility....

Given the changes that occurred in the organization and specialization of Italian industrial districts and the changing geography of the banking system, in this paper is we aim at reassessing the bank-firm relationship in industrial districts. Using firm-level data on a sample of Italian SME, we...

The regional bank problems in Japan can be summarized as accumulating non-performing loans, the lack of diversification and attendant portfolio risk, and the absence of effective competition. This paper argues that the regional bank problems should be addressed in conjunction with the financing...

A growing body of research is focusing on banking organizational issues, emphasizing the difficulties encountered by hierarchically organized banks in lending to informationally opaque borrowers. While the two extreme cases of hierarchical and non-hierarchical organizations are typically...

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of microfinance bank credit and its debt servicing on the profitability of SMEs in Alimosho Local Government Area, Lagos State, Nigeria. A survey was carried out involving 387 SMEs in Alimosho LGA, Lagos State and information was extracted...

The article presents results of research into territorial disparity of bank (branch) deployment for regions of Russia. It is suggested that there have been three periods of bank development in the country. The Siberian Federal District has been selected to illustrate each period and demonstrate...

Many previous studies identify loan, property, borrower and environmental factors that impact the probability of foreclosure. Implicit in these studies is the assumption that the property was purchased at fair value. We question this assumption based on several empirical findings regarding...

Numerous microfinance initiatives around the world aim to alleviate poverty in developing countries. However, debate persists about their effectiveness and sustainability – a concern for transnational corporations and the international business community, which contribute about $9.4 billion to...

In March 2004, the once-heralded Los Angeles Community Development Bank (LACDB) closed its doors because of insolvency. The government-created bank's demise should come as no surprise. Credit officers at the not-for-profit bank lacked incentives to monitor loans on an ongoing basis. The LACDB's...

Recent studies have documented an association between financial structure and growth of per capita income. The relationship between financial structure and job growth, by contrast, is an unexplored issue of independent interest. Here we find that U.S. nonmetropolitan employment grew faster in...