Thesis (M.Com.(Ondernemingsbest.))--Universiteit van Pretoria, 2001. / Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Business Management. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-156). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ66342.

<p> Most of the largest economic crises in recent history have been bank related. This dissertation contributes to improve our understanding of the causes and implications of financial crises because it approaches the study from a holistic perspective. It covers international, domestic, and systemic aspects that are necessary to understand the challenges imposed by financial liberalization, globalization, technological change, and interconnectivity. Chapter 1 provides the international perspective by examining the effect of global banking flows on credit booms; chapter 2 gives the domestic perspective by estimating the impact of financial crises on a country's long-run output growth; and chapter 3 zooms in further to get to the banking system level in order to study the propagation of shocks in a banking network endogenously generated by banks' profit maximizing decisions. Therefore, this dissertation accounts for the new challenges derived from the process of financial globalization and complex interconnections, and provides new venues for future analyses in this important research area.</p>

The stylized fact of co-movement of lending and economic activity has been widely interpreted as evidence of a destabilizing feedback mechanism between the banking and real sectors, suggesting the special role of credit supply in amplifying financial and macroeconomic instability. Indeed, this “procyclicality” view significantly influences bank regulations internationally. Under the Basel III, the countercyclical capital buffer is exclusively designed to dampen the volatility of credit supply over the business cycle. The strong co-movement of lending and economic activity, however, is insufficient to confirm the existence of the procyclicality, given that both demand and supply of loans decline during economic downturns. If loan supply does not play a causal role, then any measure to strengthen lending capacity of banks would be ineffective in addressing this procyclicality issue. The literature, however, provides limited, otherwise inexistent, cross-country evidence to answer these fundamental questions. This research gap calls into question the sufficiency of international evidence to assess the effectiveness of the new capital measure, and more broadly, the regulatory reform. This cross-country econometric study covering 39 economies for the period 1990– 2009 examines these fundamental issues in detail. There are three main findings and policy implications. For banking stability, a significant procyclical pattern of loan supply exists, and such pattern is negatively associated with bank capital. These findings together support the view that the countercyclical capital buffers of Basel III could be effective tools for dampening loan volatility over the business cycle. For the regulatory reform, there is prevalent evidence that capital and liquidity are determinants of loan supply. This finding bears out the main Basel III argument that stronger capital and liquidity could strengthen the resilience of the global banking sector to macroeconomic shocks. For macroeconomic stability, empirical findings suggest a moderate macroeconomic effect of loan supply, particularly for developed economies. However, the finding does not imply a small impact of banking instability on the real sector. In fact, banking crises are estimated to have a larger independent negative effect on economic growth after controlling for the macroeconomic effect through impacts of banking crises on loan supply. There are two main policy implications of these findings. First, the main channel through which stronger capital and liquidity of banks help reduce macroeconomic instability would have an impact on reducing the likelihood of the occurrence of a banking crisis. Second, during non-crisis periods, bank regulations aiming at smoothing loan supply may have a relatively moderate impact on reducing macroeconomic instability. For policy to address banking procyclicality, the results show that aside from higher quantitative capital and liquidity requirements, more stringent definitions of capital could dampen loan supply procyclicality, which speaks in favor of recent policy initiatives to strengthen the quality of regulatory capital. More stringent bank regulations are also found to reduce loan supply procyclicality in countries with deposit insurance schemes. To reduce the propagations of loan supply shocks to the real sector, policy to improve the breadth of the stock market and the size of the domestic bond market would be useful. / published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / The Banking industry globally provides Internet banking in order to offer their customers easy access to banking services. In South Africa, the banking industry has developed into a mature sector that is well managed and uses most advanced risk-management systems in conducting business. The banks in South Africa, like their counter parts in other parts of the world offer Internet banking to customers. However, the majority of South Africans in rural areas do not adopt and use Internet banking despite its convenience, the availability of Internet banking Infrastructure, the effort of banks in promoting Internet banking awareness and Internet security. This research investigated factors which influence the adoption and use of Internet banking in the context of South African rural areas.

This dissertation consists of three essays on political economy. The first essay studies the various ways in which political activism affects policy making, drawing upon evidence from the Tea Party movement in the United States in 2009 and 2010. The second essay develops a policy-centered framework for understanding voting behavior in proportional-representation systems, and tests its predictions using survey data collected around the 2002 Dutch general elections. The third essay focuses on a specific aspect of the implementation of policy, the consequences regulatory supervision may have on firm performance, and assesses the net effect of this kind of supervision on firms' operating costs in the setting of the commercial-banking sector in the United States in the period 2001-2007. / Economics

This thesis consists of two essays on empirical corporate finance. The first essay documents that the short-run and the long-run stock performance after seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) is positively related to the pre-issue demand from short-term and long-term institutional investors, respectively. This suggests that institutional investors acquire information that is most relevant to their investment horizons. Moreover, institutional investors' information advantage is more pronounced in cold issue markets than in hot issue markets, confirming firms' tendency to issue equity in periods of reduced information asymmetry. In addition, this essay documents that firms issue seasoned equity at a greater discount when the pre-issue demand from short-term institutional investors is low. The second essay examines the effects of CEO career concern incentives on firm policy. We document that a CEO's probability of being fired is positively related to equity risk, idiosyncratic risk and R&D investments. This supports the idea that CEOs with a very high likelihood of being fired tend to take more risks so that good outcomes can prevent their firing (e.g. Zwiebel (1995)). We also document that when a CEO has a high likelihood of being fired, her firm tends to have a higher leverage ratio and lower firm diversification. This is consistent with the idea that CEOs' risk-taking incentives generated when they are facing the pressure of termination could mitigate their risk aversion and induce them to implement riskier corporate policy. / Cette thèse comprend deux essais en finance d'entreprise empirique. Le premier essai met en évidence une relation entre les performances de court terme et de long terme d'une action après une augmentation de capital, et les demandes respectives d'investisseurs institutionnels de court terme et de long terme avant l'opération. Ce résultat suggère que les investisseurs institutionnels acquièrent l'information la plus pertinente pour leurs horizons d'investissement. De plus, l'avantage informationnel des investisseurs institutionnels est plus marqué lorsque les marchés primaires sont favorables que lorsqu'ils sont défavorables, ce qui confirme la tendance des entreprises à émettre du capital lorsque les asymétries informationnelles sont réduites. Cet essai montre aussi que la décote que subissent les entreprises sur les actions nouvellement émises est plus importante lorsque la demande des investisseurs institutionnels de court terme avant l'opération est faible. Le deuxième essai s'intéresse aux effets des ambitions de carrière des chefs d'entreprise sur les politiques menées par l'entreprise. Nous montrons une relation positive entre la probabilité de renvoi du chef d'entreprise et le risque des actions, le risque idiosyncratique et les investissements en R&D. Ce résultat conforte l'idée selon laquelle les chefs d'entreprise ayant une forte probabilité d'être révoqués prennent des risques, en espérant qu'un résultat favorable empêche leur renvoi (voir par exemple Zwiebel, 1995). Nous montrons également qu'une plus forte probabilité d'être révoqué est associée à un levier financier plus élevé et une diversification plus faible. Ce résultat peut s'expliquer par la pression induite par la perspective d'un renvoi, qui attenue l'aversion au risque des chefs d'entreprise et leur donne des incitations mener des politiques d'entreprise plus risquées.

This dissertation examines two issues in the theory of banking: the role and efficiency of a monopoly bank in a spatial economy and, the design of a deposit insurance contract. Chapters 2 and 3 of the thesis present the development and analysis of a simple production economy with two types of agents. Lenders have an endowment of one unit of a good that may be consumed or invested in a firm. Firms have access to a project but lack the capital necessary to operate it and thus are forced to borrow: firms' projects are identically independently distributed crosssectionally. A simple information asymmetry prevents efficient contracting by lenders and firms and results in deadweight default costs being incurred. One way these deadweight costs could be avoided is to establish a "delegated monitor"—a bank—who collects deposits from the lenders and makes loans to firms. This may result in an efficiency gain since the firms' projects are Ltd. so, as the bank makes more loans, the probability that it defaults will be lower than the probability that an individual firm defaults. This diversification reduces the probability that the bank will fail and the probability that default costs are incurred. However, I assume that these costs are related to distance. This restricts the bank's ability to diversify and may induce costly strategic behavior on the part of the bank. The bank may also lend 'locally' in that it may attract deposits in a region yet not make loans to firms near those depositors. The social welfare implications of this bank are examined in Chapter 3. The results show that the socially optimal outcome is one that restricts the firms' ability to compete with the bank in the debt market and that credit rationing may also be efficient. Chapter 4 examines a model where a deposit insurance scheme is designed by a regulator whose objective is to maximize social welfare. There is a single bank in the economy which can be one of two types: the true type is unknown to the regulator. The results show that the regulator's efficacy is improved when regular insurance premia are combined with a premia that are refunded to solvent banks—akin to a deposit insurance fund.

No description available.

No description available.