This dissertation examines the free banking laws of seven states and the impact of three provisions of the laws on the states' banking experience. In Chapter I, a review of two current theories of the free banking experience is presented. One theory contends that the laws themselves induced the banking experience of the states. The second theory asserts that economic activity induced the banking experience. This study includes a discussion of both theories in the analysis of the provision's effect on the banking experience. In Chapter II, a simple model of the operations of a free bank is presented. Also, the laws of the seven states that determine the establishment and the operations of a free bank are reviewed. The review reveals that the states enacted similar provisions, but restrictions included in the provisions differ considerably. In Chapter III, the experiences of the states are examined. The states represent a spectrum of banking experiences. The experiences of each state are characterized by four measures; the entry rate, the failure rate, the below par rate, and the average loss per dollar. Each of these measures reflects a different aspect of banking behavior and each is examined in order to determine the effect of the provision and the effect of economic activity on the behavior of the free banks. The analysis shows that both the provisions and the economic activity influence bank behavior. In Chapter IV, a theoretical analysis of the effect of the stockholders liability provision on entry and on the bank's portfolio is developed. The theory shows that an increase in the stockholders liability of a free bank reduces entry into the free banking market and increases the risky asset-capital ratio of the free bank. The testing of the theories is presented in Chapter V. The empirical evidence confirms the hypothesis that an increase in the liability of the stockholders increases the risky asset-capital ratio. The evidence does not confirm the hypothesis that an increase in the liability of the stockholder reduces entry. / Ph. D.

This thesis is concerned with the relationships between profit, profit persistence, risk and competition within the US commercial bank sector. In particular, the thesis asks three questions: how profit and profit persistence are affected by changes in regulation designed to enhance competition; how profit persistence varies over time according to changes in market and economic conditions; how different aspects of banks' risk is affected by competition and market structure. Understanding the nature of these relationships is important given the prominent role banks play in the allocation of resources, the provision of capital to the economy and the stability of the financial system. Moreover, these roles in turn, have an effect on bank performance and wider economic growth and stability. Such issues have especially come to prominence following the financial crisis and thus there is a need for empirical evidence on which to base policy. To examine these relationships the thesis implements panel estimation techniques and obtains data on all commercial banks, primarily over the period 1984-2009, thus including births and deaths. The key findings show, first, that profit persistence is relatively low compared to previous US banking studies and compared to manufacturing firms. Moreover, persistence varies with regulatory changes, although not always in the expected direction, notably the increase in persistence following the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Second, additional time-variation in persistence is linked to bank specific, market structure and economic factors. Notably, persistence varies with bank size and market share, market concentration and output growth, but the precise nature of these relationships varies across the sample and by bank size. Third, that there is a difference in the nature of the relationship between competition and loan risk on the one hand and competition and total risk and leverage on the other. We also find that the relationship between risk and market structure varies according to bank size and that the economic cycle influences banks' risk. The implications and contribution of this thesis lie in establishing empirical evidence for understanding the nature of the relationships between competition, profits and risk. This is particularly prescient given the move towards new regulation following the financial crisis. Key results here show that no simple relationship exists between bank size or market concentration and competition and risk, therefore policy should account for such differences, whether according to bank size or type of risk.

This paper examines the relation between banks' dividends and their future financial health. Using banks' Nonperforming Loans Ratio, Loan Loss Provision Ratio, and Z-score as proxies for their financial health, I show that there is a strong positive relation between banks' dividends lagged by one quarter and their financial health in the current quarter. This main finding continues to hold following several additional tests, including the application of an instrumental variable approach, the use of change in dividends as the key independent variable, the exclusion of banks that are subject to stress test, the addition of macroeconomic variables, the exclusion of too-big-to-fail banks, and the exclusion of non-depository banks. I also find that the positive relation between banks' dividends and their future financial health is more pronounced for banks with a higher degree of opacity, a lower Tier 1 capital ratio, and during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. This paper contributes to three strands of the finance literature, including the Risk Reduction Hypothesis of dividend signaling in corporate finance, bank dividend policies, and the determinants of banks' financial stability. First, I show that there is a positive relation between banks' dividends lagged by one quarter and their financial health in the current quarter, also meaning that banks' dividends are negatively associated with their future risk conditions. This finding is consistent with the Risk Reduction Hypothesis regarding dividend signaling. Second, Floyd, Li, and Skinner (2015) propose a new idea that banks use dividends to signal financial health, and they rely on this idea to explain why banks have a higher and more stable propensity to pay dividends vis-à-vis industrials during the past several decades. My finding that banks' dividends are positively associated with their future financial health empirically supports this idea proposed by Floyd, Li, and Skinner (2015). Last, to my knowledge, no prior study has attempted to extensively detect a direct relation between banks' dividends and their financial stability. I fill this gap by investigating whether this relation exists. I show that banks' dividends have significantly positive explanatory power on their future financial stability, as proxied by three risk conditions.

It is the purpose of this thesis to give a factual presentation of the operation of the discount system of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas, covering the years 1914 through 1935.

The purpose of this research is to identify common characteristics of commercial banks that are likely to engage in large dollar volumes of OBS financial instruments. Four financial instruments examined are standby letters of credit, letters of credit, interest rate swaps, and loan sales.

As long as one security is classified into AFS category, I document that banks strategically time the recognitions of gains and losses on AFS securities to smooth earnings, to meet earnings targets, to reduce regulatory costs, or to facilitate seasonal equity offering. These evidences collaborate with my previous results that banks prefer classifying credit risky securities into AFS rather than into trading category. / Finally, I investigate market reactions to fair value changes on AFS securities and to trading revenues from trading assets. I show that trading revenues are more persistent, with greater value relevance, and drive more significant stock returns. This evidence indicates that artificially classifying securities which are held for trading purpose into AFS category may have negative impacts on firm values. / Given the investment decisions made by the managers, the second issue studied in this thesis is the financial reporting decisions made by banks. To elaborate, banks have discretions to classify the debt securities into available-for-sale (AFS) category vs. trading category depending on the purpose of the holding, while the classification decisions have very different impacts on firms' income statement. Therefore, I study how accounting treatments of AFS and trading category and their different impacts on firms' income statements affect reporting decisions. I find banks inclined to classify credit-riskier securities into AFS rather than into trading category, when banks have weak interest revenues, have high level of income-increasing discretional accruals, have concentrated assets, or have high level of risky assets. But I do not find classification decision is related to bank's capital adequacy ratio. / Keywords: Bank holding companies; debt security investments; managerial compensation; trading assets; available-for-sale; SFAS 115; gains trading. / This study examines U.S. banks' investment behaviors as well as their financial reporting decisions on debt security investments. Particularly, I focus on two separate but related issues. The first issue examined is whether and how managerial incentives, influenced by the compensation contracts, affect managers' investment decisions on debt securities in the U.S. banking industry. Using a sample composed of top 1,000 bank holding companies from 2001 to 2009, I find that managers, when their wealth is more sensitive to stock return volatility, tend to structure the firms' debt investments with a higher proportion of credit risky securities. Provided that price of credit risky debt securities slumped during the recent financial crisis, that empirical evidence is consistent with the view that managerial compensation may induce excess risk-taking in the U.S. banking industry. The finding is relevant to both researchers and practitioners when they consider restructuring bankers' compensation. / Zhou, Chunquan. / Advisers: Woody Y. W. Wu; Danqing Young. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-08(E), Section: A. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-83). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

This study is an in-depth empirical investigation that seeks to compare consumer expectations to perceptions in the delivery of service within community banks in the southern United States. It has as its aim to develop a useful instrument to evaluate service quality by comparing consumer expectations to their perceptions of delivered service. An additional purpose is to determine bank chief executive officers’ ability to predict consumer expectations in the area of service delivery. The theoretical portion of the study focused upon a review of the history of banking in the United States and its subunit, the State of Texas, which is uniquely different from the banking systems of Europe and Asia. The literature was also examined to review service quality and customer satisfaction. In order to examine methods to predict service quality in community banks, an investigation was carried out among consumers of fifteen community banks in the southern United States. The collection of the data was driven by six research hypotheses and involved two questionnaires. One questionnaire ask for customer expectations versus perceptions. A second questionnaire required the chief executive officers of the consumers’ banks to state their perceptions of what their consumers expected in the way of service delivery. The main findings of the research built upon and extended the research by Ittner and Larcker (1996) which noted that the three prime components of customer satisfaction revolved around three specific antecedents—perceived quality, perceived value, and customer expectations, the study strongly reinforced and confirmed the importance of the three antecedents. This study indicated that while expectations are very high, perceptions are also high, but not as high as expectations. Milligan (1995) advanced the idea that it should be obvious that the element of service quality was the primary driver in bank selection, but no confirmation study was made by him or others comparing the five factors (service quality, location, advertising, recommendation of others, and service charges/fees). This study concluded that service quality was the most important factor in the selection of a community bank in the southern United States. With no specific literature relating specifically to bankers’ perceptions of service delivery expectations by consumers, one of the most significant findings in this study noted that 77.3 percent of the responses to the questions indicated a match of bankers’ perceptions with consumers’ expectations. While outcomes indicated that perceptions were equal to or greater than expectations, this does not conclusively prove that satisfactory service quality will tend to be associated with outcomes equal to or above expectations. This could indicate that the customers did not expect much in the way of outstanding service. Based upon results obtained from surveys, there appears to be a high likelihood that a bank could reasonably predict the retention of customers using the overlaid plots that in this study show high expectations and high perceptions. However, this study could not conclusively substantiate that gender, income, and education impact service quality in community banks. Given the limited amount of literature relating to the delivery of service quality by community banks in the United States, this study provides both researchers and practitioners an empirical study of both consumers’ and bankers’ expectations and perceptions of service delivery, which had not been fully explored in the past.

Orientador: Carlos Salas Páez / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T21:58:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Strong_StevenMichael_M.pdf: 4434873 bytes, checksum: 262e5c552d0eb06aeb40d7022effc867 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Trabalhadores do setor financeiro dos EUA apresentam a menor taxa de sindicalização em comparação aos trabalhadores de outras indústrias, e estão entre os menos organizados do mundo. À luz da recente crise econômica, o movimento operário dos EUA, junto com os sindicatos internacionais, tem tido grande interesse em reverter as sombrias taxas de sindicalização, devido à importância destes trabalhadores, que estão dentro de um mercado financeiro globalizado altamente dominado por empresas norte-americanas. O atual desafio em organizar estes trabalhadores está enraizado em uma história profunda de evasão, ignorância, desorientação, repressão, e derrotas para os interesses do sindicalismo dos trabalhadores de escritórios. Este trabalho explora as primeiras raízes dos obstáculos atuais que os trabalhadores do setor financeiro enfrentam na tentativa de se sindicalizar, examinando a resistência popular à formação do Setor Financeiro dos EUA no século 19. Uma visão geral do desenvolvimento inicial do setor financeiro, de suas respostas políticas e da organização do trabalho é fornecida, incluindo informações específicas sobre os trabalhadores do setor financeiro, quando disponíveis. O aumento da feminização do trabalho de colarinho branco após a Guerra Civil dos EUA também é explorado. Os fatores chave que contribuem para as baixas taxas de sindicalização incluem o impacto da liderança sindical influenciada pelo populismo, o que contribuiu para as reformas que promovem uma estrutura financeira descentralizada, a exclusão dos trabalhadores de escritório, a feminização da força de trabalho de escritórios, as atitudes das lideranças sindicais em relação às mulheres e trabalhadores de escritório, e a falta de um partido trabalhista nos EUA, tudo isso combinado com a repressão do governo contra os comunistas que pretendiam organizar o setor. Na conclusão, são apresentadas sugestões para a continuação da pesquisa sobre o porquê de os EUA não possuírem um sindicato dos trabalhadores do setor financeiro / Abstract: Financial sector workers in the US suffer from the lowest rate of unionization of workers in any of the industries in the US, and are among the least organized in the world. In light of the recent economic crisis, and given the importance of US financial workers within a globalized financial market highly dominated by US firms, the US labor movement, along with unions internationally, has taken great interest in reversing these dismal unionization rates. The current challenge to organizing these workers is rooted in a deep history of avoidance, ignorance, misguidance, repression, and defeats for the interests of office worker unionism. This work explores the early roots of the current obstacles these workers face in attempting to unionize by examining the popular resistance to US Financial Sector formation in the 19th century. An overview of early financial sector development, political responses, and labor organization is provided, including specific information on financial sector workers when available. The increase and feminization of white-collar work after the US Civil War is explored, especially in the clerical industries of the financial sector. Key factors contributing to low unionization rates include the impact of populist-influenced labor leadership that preferred a decentralized financial structure and excluded clerical workers, the feminization of the clerical labor force, the attitudes of trade union leaders towards women and clerical workers, and the combination of a lack of a labor party in the US and government repression of communists who had the vision to organize the sector. Suggestions for continued research on why the US does not have a financial sector workers union are presented in the conclusion / Mestrado / Economia Social e do Trabalho / Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico

The entire banking systems in the western societies is based on the use of interest. The bank charges the borowers interest on its loans and pays its depositors interest on their deposits. On the other hand, the Middle Eastern banking system is an interest free system that prohibits the use of interest, either in receipt or in payment.

by Mak Kwai-ming, Simon [and] Lam Hing-wai, Johnny. / Bibliography: leaves 79-80 / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1984