Separation between CEO and Chairman of the Board is typically viewed as evidence of good corporate governance. Surprisingly, the literature has failed so far to uncover any significant relation between CEO/Chairman duality and firm performance. By distinguishing between periods with and without CEO turnover, we empirically identify two offsetting effects: the correlation between duality and per...

This paper uses unique data and augments existing theory focussing on bank’s lending to new ventures. We are primarily concerned with banks’ use of collateral and interest margins in terms of reducing adverse selection and moral hazard problems. We find a trade-off between interest margins and collateral per unit borrowed. Margins are insensitive to the magnitude of collateral per unit of borro...

Does the lack of peers contribute to the observed gender gap in entrepreneurial success? A random sample of customers of India’s largest women’s bank was offered two days of business counseling, and a random subsample was invited to attend with a friend. The intervention significantly increased participants’ business activity, but only if they were trained with a friend. Those trained with a fr...

A very debated issue in recent years is the cyber crime and its impact on market returns and reputation of firms. The issue is made particularly actual by the proliferation of information technology and internet. Information security breaches are concerned with protecting the accessibility, integrity and confidentiality of information. As a consequence, there are potential high explicit and imp...

This paper shows equilibrium existence for an infinite–horizon exchange economy with incomplete markets of real assets when default is allowed. Borrowers are required to constitute collateral in terms of durable goods and face credit constraints that depend on their past default. When credit constraints are inelastic, Ponzi schemes are ruled out and an equilibrium exists. JEL Classification: D5...

a stochastic frontier cost function indicates that the annual cost of complying with the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is $171,000 per thrift institution, roughly 2.3 percent of variable costs. But compliance cost is significantly less than the estimated 21 percent cost inefficiency. Based on published estimates of the incremental number of mortgage loans induced by CRA, the m...

We use a model of mean-shifting investment technologies to study the relationship between market structure, risk taking and social welfare in lending markets. Introduction of loan market competition is shown to reduce lending rates and to generate higher investments without increasing the equilibrium bankruptcy risk of borrowers. Hence, there need not be a tradeo€ between lending market competi...

Over the past several years, there has been an extensive discussion among practitioners and academics about whether and how a portfolio management approach could help banks to better manage risk capital and create shareholder value. In this article, the authors argue that there are four key drivers which require banks to move from a transactional to a more portfolio management like approach whe...

what are the main success factors of microfinance institutions in providing financial services to poor people in a sustainable manner? in this article we try to answer this question. in one hand, we analyze the core compatibility between microeconomics of asymmetric information, transaction cost and risk, and new different operational mechanisms applied by microfinance institutions. on the othe...

Abstract Portfolio performance measures using holdings data are panel regressions. The returns of a fund’s stocks regressed on its lagged portfolio weights. Stock fixed effects isolate average from time-series predictive ability. Control variables condition for fund the characteristics held. long-term drives some classical measures, while ability others. A “buy-and-hold drift,” where weights in...