1 The questions addressed in this paper grew out of my work with Jeff Banks on bandit problems and their applications (Banks and Sundaram (1992a, 1992b, 1994)) and owe much to many discussions I had with him on this subject. I also had the benefit of several discussions with Andy McLennan, especially regarding the material in Sections 4 and 6 of this paper.

The federal tax code creates challenges for comparing the profit rates of different banks on a consistent basis. The earnings of banks that elect to operate under subchapter S of the federal tax code are not subject to federal corporate income tax, but shareholders of these “S-banks” are taxed on their pro rata share of the entire earnings of the bank. The number of banks electing subchapter S ...

The liquidity crisis in 2008 sparked interest in the role of regulation that could promote resilience and stability in the banking system. While the Public Interest theory suggests that legal policies could discipline banking activities, the Private Interest theory predicts otherwise, which impairs banking performance. The conflicting theories warrant comprehensive research, especially for Isla...

Though overall bank performance from July 2007 to December 2008 was the worst since at least the Great Depression, there is significant variation in the cross-section of stock returns of large banks across the world during that period. We use this variation to evaluate the importance of factors that have been discussed as having contributed to the poor performance of banks during the credit cri...

The distribution and relative density of smooth-coated otters Lutra perspicillata Geoffroy were studied along a 425 km stretch of Chambal river within the National Chambal Sanctuary, Central India, between 1988 and 1992. Sample sites of l km were surveyed every 5 km. The study revealed that the distribution of otters along the river is patchy and largely restricted to the upper reaches. During ...

Islamic banks face restrictions in refinancing due to the guidelines of the Shari ́ah prohibiting financial contracts and transactions based on interest, gambling and speculation as same as due to the lack of liquidity sources such as an interbank market, a lender of last resort or an asset market. This is the first study with empirical cross-country results focusing on liquidity transformation ...

Real time gross settlement systems (RTGS-systems) operated by central banks are the predominant form of large value payment systems. They allow execution of fund transfers between central bank accounts of commercial banks and other financial institutions as a continuous process by settling payments individually, with their full value and with immediate finality. Because individual payments are ...

I use geographic variation in bank lending to study how bank real estate losses impacted the supply of credit and employment during the Great Recession. Banks exposed to distressed housing markets cut mortgage and small business lending relative to other banks in the same county. This lending contraction had real effects, as counties whose banks were exposed to adverse shocks in other markets s...

We assess the impact of the geographic expansion of bank assets on the cost of banks’ interestbearing liabilities. Existing research suggests that expansion can both intensify agency problems that increase funding costs and facilitate risk diversification that decreases funding costs. Using a newly developed identification strategy, we discover that the geographic expansion of banks across U.S....

This paper investigates the network structure of interbank markets. Using a dataset of interbank exposures in the Netherlands, we corroborate the recent hypothesis that the core periphery model is a ‘stylised fact’ of interbank markets. We find a core of highly connected banks intermediating between periphery banks and pay particular attention to model selection. Our analysis can help improve s...