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Working Paper
Risk overhang and loan portfolio decisions
Despite operating under substantial regulatory constraints, we find that commercial banks manage their investments largely consistent with the predictions of portfolio choice models with capital market imperfections. Based on 1990-2002 data for small (assets less than $1 billion) U.S. commercial banks, net new lending to the business, real estate, and consumer sectors increased with expected sector profitability, tended to decrease with the illiquidity of existing (overhanging) loan stocks, and was responsive to correlations in cross-sector returns. Small banks are most appropriate for this ...
Working Paper
Advertising and pricing at multiple-output firms: evidence from U.S. thrift institutions
We derive five hypotheses regarding market competition, price, and advertising from a theoretical model of a profit maximizing depository institution, and test these conjectures in a simultaneous system of deposit interest rates and advertising expenditures for a data panel of 1,867 thrift institutions that offer 13 different deposit products in 666 local markets in the U.S. between 1994 and 2000. We find some support for each of our hypotheses ? branding, information, Dorfman-Steiner, structure-advertising, and structure-price ? with the strength of the results often depending on the ...
Newsletter
Corporate governance at community banks: a Seventh District analysis
Community banks can be vulnerable to the same economic tensions and conflicts of interest that have compromised corporate governance at more high-profile firms over the past few years. The authors discuss their preliminary findings from a project designed to construct a systematic database on the corporate governance practices at District community banks.
Working Paper
The informational advantage of specialized monitors: the case of bank examiners
Large commercial banking firms are monitored by specialized private sector monitors and by specialized government examiners. Previous research suggests that bank exams produce little useful information that is not already reflected in market prices. In this article, we apply a new research methodology to a unique data set, and find that government exams of large national banks produce significant new information which financial markets do not fully internalize for several additional months. Our results indicate that specialized government monitors can identify value-relevant information about ...
Journal Article
What makes a bank efficient? : a look at financial characteristics and management and ownership structure
Increased competition, new technology, and bank consolidation are reinforcing the need for banks to operate efficiently. Moreover, recent research on banking efficiency shows that there is much room for reducing expenses and making better use of bank resources. This article compares the financial characteristics, as well as the management and ownership structure, of a sample of efficient and inefficient banks from the Tenth Federal Reserve District. The comparison reveals a number of factors that contribute to bank efficiency. ; Efficient banks control all aspects of costs, yet deliver bank ...
Working Paper
Who's minding the store? motivating and monitoring hired managers at small, closely held firms: the case of commercial banks
We test whether the gains from hiring an outside manager exceed the principal-agent costs of owner-manager separation at 266 small, closely held U.S. commercial banks. Our results suggest that hiring an outside manager can improve a bank's profit efficiency, but that these gains depend on aligning the hired managers with owners via managerial shareholdings. We find that over-utilizing this control mechanism results in entrenchment, while under-utilization is costly in terms of foregone profits. This study provides a relatively unfettered test of mitigating principal-agent costs, because these ...
Working Paper
The effects of geographic expansion on bank efficiency
We assess the effects of geographic expansion on bank efficiency using cost and profit efficiency for over 7,000 U.S. banks, 1993-1998. We find that parent organizations exercise some control over the efficiency of their affiliates, although this control tends to dissipate with distance to the affiliate. However, on average, distance-related efficiency effects tend to be modest, suggesting that some efficient organizations can overcome any effects of distance. The results imply there may be no particular optimal geographic scope for banking organizations some may operate efficiently within a ...
Working Paper
Efficiency barriers to the consolidation of the European financial services industry
Cross-border consolidation of financial institutions within Europe has been relatively limited, possibly reflecting efficiency barriers to operating across borders, including distance; differences in language, culture, currency, and regulatory/supervisory structures; and explicit or implicit rules against foreign competitors. EU policies such as the Single Market Programme and the European Monetary Union attenuate some but not all of these barriers. The evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that these barriers offset most of any potential efficiency gains from cross-border consolidation. ...
Journal Article
The financial performance of pure play Internet banks
In theory, banks that conduct all their business over the Internet will have low overhead expenses. If these saving materialize, Internet banks could use them to fuel fast growth while still earning normal profits. This article analyzes a small sample of "pure lay" Internet banks launched during the late 1990s. Compared with young branching banks, these young Internet banks have low physical overhead and grow fast--but they earn low profits due to high labor expenses, low noninterest income, and low core deposits.
Working Paper
Globalization of financial institutions: evidence from cross-border banking performance
We address the causes, consequences, and implications of the cross-border consolidation of financial institutions by reviewing several hundred studies, providing comparative international data, and estimating cross-border banking efficiency in France, Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. during the 1990s. We find that, on average, domestic banks have higher profit efficiency than foreign banks. However, banks from at least one country (the U.S.) appear to operate with relatively high efficiency both at home and abroad. If these results continue to hold, they do not preclude successful ...