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...

Capital adequacy has become the main regulatory tool to achieve financial stability in the last twenty years. While most papers analysed the effect of capital adequacy on risk taking, there is a lack of evidence on the relationship between deleveraging and the return on equity capital. In this...

Is there a technology gap between Islamic and conventional banks? Do Islamic and conventional banks have different cost efficiency levels? We show that conventional and Islamic banks have similar mean (aggregate) cost efficiency levels in the MENA area and there is no technology gap between the...

Financial instruments in levels 2 and 3 for accounting purposes are complex and opaque products and their evaluation is problematic. The amount of these assets held by banks in Europe is exceptionally high (€3 trillion in 2019) and there is no empirical evidence as to the extent, if at all, to...