This thesis aims to advance our understanding of banking in the post-crisis era. It makes three distinct contributions to the literature on banking. The first chapter examines whether "too-big-to-fail" (TBTF) factors affect estimates of scale economies for large banks. Based on a standard model of bank production that does not control for any TBTF factors, we find evidence of scale economies for our sample of large banks. However, once we control for TBTF factors, we instead find evidence of constant returns to scale. These results suggest that estimates of scale economies for large banks are affected by TBTF factors. The second chapter examines the impact of forbearance lending on firm dynamics and performance in Europe since the sovereign debt crisis. We develop a quantitative model, which features endogenous forbearance lending and endogenous firm defaults, as well as information asymmetry faced by the lender. We fit the model to key Euro Area firm statistics over the period 2011 to 2014. We show that in the absence of forbearance lending, the average firm sales growth, investment and productivity are higher than in the benchmark scenario with forbearance lending. These results suggest that forbearance lending practices have contributed to the recent economic stagnation across the Euro Area. The third chapter introduces a novel way to identify the causal effect of bank capital on risk-taking. We use provisions for misconduct issues as an instrument for bank capital. We show that misconduct provisions are an appropriate instrument due to their strong and negative impact on bank capital, and are otherwise unrelated to asset risk-taking. Our main finding is subsequently that a negative shock to bank capital leads to an increase in risk-taking, as measured by detailed information on mortgage underwriting standards.

Thesis (M.M. (Public and Development Management))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Wits School of Governance, 2016. / Title: The relevance of the Basel III Accord within South African Banking. There are numerous countries which are regulated by the Basel II Accord that manifested different results from the 2007 subprime crisis. The United States and some European Countries emanated the subprime crises and experienced massive decline in market confidence as write-offs became the order of the day. The write offs became so severe that the Federal Bank of the United States had to step in to offer massive bailouts to rescue the American banking industry. However, conversely to what happened in America, there some countries (including South Africa) which were also regulated by the Basel II Accord but did not experience massive write-offs as a result of the subprime crisis? This begs a question of whether there is a deeper reason for the failure of the American and European banking system to the extent that they had to bailout their banks during the 2007 financial crisis. With this question remaining unanswered, there remains skepticism on whether a country regulator can rely on implementing the Basel III Accord for improved banking sector resilience. In particular, the stringent requirements of the introduction of liquidity standards will be costly to implement in South Africa. Therefore, a question will need to be asked whether the Basel III Accord is relevant in South Africa. / GR2018

thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Johannesburg, August 2015 / Financial inclusion is promoted as an important economic development program to solve the lack of access to formal financial services for billions of people around the world. The concept “financial inclusion” has entered mainstream business and development discourses as an all-encompassing term for innovation in financial services for the poor. South African policymakers and financial service providers have embraced this approach to address some of the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. A number of examples are held up as successes of financial inclusion such as India’s “Jan Dhan Yojana” initiative. The program, launched in August 2014, signed up 75 million people to new bank accounts in under three months. South African policymakers and financial service providers have also embraced financial inclusion to address the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. Several consequences challenge this optimistic view. The first issue is the high level of dormancy across various services. India’s account has up to 75% dormancy, much like South Africa’s Mzansi account launched expressly for financial inclusion in 2005. It was abandoned by 2012 due to lack of use. The second major issue is adverse inclusion that arises after people are “financially included” and they end up worse off than before. In August 2014 African Bank, the largest lender to low-income individuals in South Africa, failed because it had issued loans to customers who eventually could not afford to repay them. Despite these issues, the focus of financial inclusion remains on targets of density, penetration and geographic access as measured in the World Bank’s Findex, a global financial inclusion database. Practitioners and researchers tend to be concerned with how people as borrowers, savers, bank account users and mobile phone users access and use financial services. Yet an unexplored issue is how these subject positions came to be, how they are maintained and the specific rationalities that accompany them. Following Foucault, this study is an attempt to understand how the concept of financial inclusion has functioned in our society to create human beings as subjects. This is a seven-year genealogical research project of South Africa’s national financial inclusion effort. Over this period, three discourse clusters were identified and analysed. The first cluster consists of 12 texts produced by a range of public, private and civil society institutions. The second cluster of academic discourses on financial inclusion consists of 3 83 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2009 and 2013. The third cluster is a collection of texts from local sources in two townships produced by those individuals who are often the subjects in the other discourse clusters. The analysis reveals dominant modes of objectification in each cluster and the synthesis enables the search for evidence of a regime of truth on financial inclusion. Evidence indicates that dominant discourses of financial inclusion, irrespective of origin, limit subjects to existing practices of money management. Therefore, despite claims of the sweeping changes that can result from financial inclusion, this study argues that this form of development discourse perpetuates existing concentrations of wealth. Counter-narratives that link financial inclusion and asset building offer an important break in this dominance / MT2016

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of important market participants such as Mutual Funds, Hedge Funds and the Federal Reserve Bank on the equilibrium equity premium, risk free rate and asset volatility and to analyze the effect of these institutions on risk shifting, portfolio allocation and financial stability. Specific features of institutional investors and central banks as well as their role in financial markets are reviewed and analyzed in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, it is shown that the competitive pressure to beat a benchmark may induce institutional trading behavior that exposes retail investors to tail risk. In our model, institutional investors are different from a retail investor because they derive higher utility when they outperform the benchmark. This forces institutions to take on leverage to over-invest in the benchmark. Institutions execute fire sales when the benchmark asset experiences negative shocks. This behavior increases market volatility, raising the tail risk exposure of the retail investor. Nevertheless, ex-post, tail risk is only short lived, all investors survive in the long run under standard conditions, and the most patient investor dominates in the sense that she has the highest consumption wealth ratio. Ex-ante, however, benchmarking is welfare reducing for the retail investor, and beneficial only to the impatient institutional investor. Chapter 3 presents an analysis on how monetary authorities seeking to stabilize inflation, output and smooth interest rates distort the term structure of interest rates and prices of risk relative to an economy where central authorities adjust the money supply without taking into consideration the slope of the yield curve. Closed-form expressions for all equilibrium quantities are presented and the impact of quantitative easing on prices, risk premium and volatility of financial markets instruments, such as stocks and bonds, are evaluated. The changes in macroeconomic variables such as consumption, money demand and investment policies are also investigated. Under the adopted parametrization, quantitative easing is welfare improving. In addition, quantitative easing increases nominal bond and equity volatility, while reducing both real and nominal bond yields for all maturities.

The annual 10-K report has historically been the most important aspect in assessing the position of a publicly held company. However, as the flow of information has increased with the dawn of new technologies, less and less attention has been paid to these audited financial statements. In order to assess if investors are still reacting to the information contained in the annual report, this paper examines the relationship between accounting ratios and stock price in banks traded on United States stock exchanges. By examining accounting ratios instead of simply looking at Earnings Per Share, new information was revealed regarding what aspects of the annual report investors react to. Ratios that incorporate information that is difficult to predict, such as leverage or allowance accounts were more likely to affect a stock’s performance, while those that contained information that is more readily available from other sources had less of an effect.

[pt] Com dados bancários brasileiros entre 2000 e 2008, o trabalho busca analisar como a presença de bancos privados nas cidades é afetada pela qualidade média de seus tomadores de empréstimos, medida aqui pela razão entre provisão e operação de crédito. É feita uma descrição dos dados bancários em relação a características demográficas dos municípios e, em seguida, estimações de probit ordenado, de acordo com o que é feito em modelos de entrada. Finalizamos abrindo espaço para a endogeneidade nessa relação, usando quantidade de bancos públicos e PIB agropecuário como variáveis instrumentais para razão de provisão por operação de crédito na tentativa de corrigir o problema. / [en] With Brazilian bank data from 2000 to 2008, the paper analyzes how the presence of private banks in the cities is affected by the average quality of its borrowers, measured here by the ratio between supply and credit operation. It made a description of the data bank in relation to demographic characteristics of the municipalities and then ordered probit estimations, according to models of entry. We conclude by considering endogeneity in this relationship, using the amount of public banks and agricultural GDP as instrumental variables for ratio of provision for credit operation in an attempt to correct the problem.

This study addressed a need to identify the effectiveness of in-branch, employee administered training programs. A comparison of various training methods and a ranking of the effectiveness of those methodologies would enable managers to make informed training design and purchase decisions. The purpose of this study was to determine the differences between four training methods as evaluated by post-training assessment scores. This study also sought to determine the following: 1) did all four methods significantly impact short term material recall?, and 2) did gender impact training effectiveness? The training methods studied were: video; study guide; video plus study guide; video and study guide plus reinforcement meeting. A control group was used to obtain a pre-training baseline. One hundred eighty two employees who worked at one of twenty randomly selected Portland, Oregon branches of a large, regional bank participated in the study. Each branch utilized one of the five randomly assigned methods in a scheduled staff meeting. After completing the training, each participant completed a post training assessment testing material recall. The control group completed the assessment without participating in training. Analysis of Variance tests were used to determine if significant differences existed between: 1) the mean scores of the control group and the training methods, 2) the mean scores of the training methods themselves, and 3) the mean scores of males and females. A significant difference was found at the .05 level between the mean scores of the control group and every training method except video. There were no significant differences between the mean scores of the four training methods. There was not a significant difference between the mean scores of males and females. There was also no significant difference in method effectiveness based on gender.

The dissertation seeks to contribute to the existing body of work in the area of Islamic finance by examining the extent of divergence in practice of Islamic financing from the traditional Shari`ah in the Australian context. To this end, the dissertation presents a discursive analysis of the regulation of Islamic Finance in Australia in terms of (a) the financing instruments used, (b) certainty of transactions between participants in the system, and (c) institutional risk management of Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs). The methodology chosen for the study is through the Shari`ah, where law, finance, economics and business form a single dimension only, even though a very significant one. Examination of the issues of this study is undertaken through the literature in the relevant field as well as the author’s personal expertise and working experience with several Islamic banks (IBs) and IFIs for a considerable period of time, in addition to his active involvement with at least two of Islamic Financial Services Providers (IFSPs) in Australia. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract not available

This thesis is about (a) money supply being determined by banking behaviour, or by the behaviour of central banks and (b) the influence of money supply on bank stock returns. That money is endogenously determined is a proposition of post-Keynesian (PK) economists suggesting that money supply is determined by the behaviour of commercial banks as banks adjust money creation in response to credit demands by the public. This theory challenges the monetarist view of exogenous money supply, where the central bank is said to control money supply. This thesis examines how, under the credit-creation behaviour of banks, the money supply affects bank stock returns in a multi-equation model.