purpose : our aim was to isolate mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) from mouse umbilical cord and culture them with vitreous body to investigate their capacity to differentiate into lens fiber cells, crystallins are expressed. methods : wharton's jelly is the appropriate source of mscs. after isolation, the cells were cultured and alkaline phosphatase detection kit was used for staining undiffe...

Liquid assets are critical for banking operations. They guarantee avoiding liquidity risk and widens managerial decision options to invest in emerging profitable projects; however, holding extra liquidity entails opportunity costs. Accordingly, empirical literature does not provide a conclusive relationship between liquidity and profitability. The purpose of this research is to analyze the asym...

Cross-border banking has been important across Africa for a long time, with regional banks taking on a more prominent role only recently. This paper provides an overview over the literature of cross-border banking and financial deepening and inclusion, with a focus on Africa. It also offers suggestive evidence that it is critical to differentiate between different types of cross-border banks wh...

Before the credit crisis that started in mid-2007, it was generally believed by top regulators that credit derivatives make banks sounder. In this paper, we investigate the validity of this view. We examine the use of credit derivatives by US bank holding companies with assets in excess of one billion dollars from 1999 to 2005. Using the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Bank Holding Company Data...

This work extends the contagion model introduced by Nier et al. (2007) to inhomogeneous networks. We preserve the convenient description of a financial system by a sparsely parameterized random graph but add several relevant inhomogeneities, namely well-connected banks, financial institutions with disproportionately large interbank assets, and big banks focusing on wholesale and retail customer...

Using bank level data for 80 countries in the 1988-1995 period, this paper examines the extent of foreign ownership in national banking markets. The net interest margins, overhead, taxes paid, and profitability of foreign and domestic banks are compared. The functioning of foreign relative to domestic banks is very different in developing and developed countries, with foreign banks achieving hi...

The medieval banks of continental Europe facilitated trade by serving as payment intermediaries. Depositors commonly would pay one another by transferring bank balances with the aid of overdraft credit. We model this process in an environment of intermediate good exchange with incomplete contract enforcement. Our model suggests that the early banks were capable of accessing the “netting credit”...