IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v80y1998i2p314-325.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bank Capitalization And Cost: Evidence Of Scale Economies In Risk Management And Signaling

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph P. Hughes
  • Loretta J. Mester

Abstract

We amend the standard cost model to account for the role of financial capital in banking. The cost function is conditioned on the level of capital, but we model the demand for financial capital so that it can serve as a cushion against insolvency for potentially risk-averse managers and as a signal of risk for less informed outsiders. Scale economies are then computed without assuming that the bank chooses a level of capitalization that minimizes cost. We find evidence of substantial scale economies and that bank managers are risk averse and use the level of financial capital to signal the level of risk. © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph P. Hughes & Loretta J. Mester, 1998. "Bank Capitalization And Cost: Evidence Of Scale Economies In Risk Management And Signaling," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 314-325, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:80:y:1998:i:2:p:314-325
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/003465398557401
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Loretta J. Mester, 1994. "How efficient are Third District banks?," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Jan, pages 3-18.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hadi Ghafoorian & NikIntan Norhan & Mohammed Ndaliman Abubakar & Fazel Mohammadi Nodeh, 2013. "Efficiency Considering Credit Risk in Banking Industry, Using Two-stage DEA," Journal of Social and Development Sciences, AMH International, vol. 4(8), pages 356-360.
    2. Jose Pastor, 1999. "Efficiency and risk management in Spanish banking: a method to decompose risk," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 371-384.
    3. Diego A. Restrepo-Tobón & Subal C. Kumbhakar & Kai Sun, 2013. "Are U.S. Commercial Banks Too Big?," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 10943, Universidad EAFIT.
    4. Gunjan M. Sanjeev, 2006. "Data Envelopment Analysis (Dea) for Measuring Technical Efficiency of Banks," Vision, , vol. 10(1), pages 13-27, January.
    5. Loretta J. Mester, "undated". "Efficiency of Banks in the Third Federal Reserve District," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 02-94, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    6. Kulasekaran, Sivakumar & Shaffer, Sherrill, 2002. "Cost efficiency among credit card banks," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 595-614.
    7. José Manuel Pastor Monsálvez, 1999. "- Credit Risk And Efficiency In The European Banking Systems: A Three-Stage Analysis," Working Papers. Serie EC 1999-18, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    8. Maudos, Joaquin & Pastor, Jose M. & Perez, Francisco & Quesada, Javier, 2002. "Cost and profit efficiency in European banks," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 33-58, February.
    9. Berger, Allen N. & Mester, Loretta J., 1997. "Inside the black box: What explains differences in the efficiencies of financial institutions?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(7), pages 895-947, July.
    10. Jose Pastor & Lorenzo Serrano, 2005. "Efficiency, endogenous and exogenous credit risk in the banking systems of the Euro area," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(9), pages 631-649.
    11. Robert DeYoung & Gary Whalen, 1999. "Banking Industry Consolidation: Efficiency Issues," Macroeconomics 9906011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Joseph P. Hughes & William W. Lang & Loretta J. Mester & Choon-Geol Moon, 1996. "Safety in numbers? Geographic diversification and bank insolvency risk," Working Papers 96-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    13. Mester, Loretta J., 1996. "A study of bank efficiency taking into account risk-preferences," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 1025-1045, July.
    14. Diego Restrepo-Tobón & Subal Kumbhakar & Kai Sun, 2015. "Obelix vs. Asterix: Size of US commercial banks and its regulatory challenge," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 125-168, October.
    15. Pantalone, Coleen C. & Platt, Marjorie B., 1997. "Thrift cost inefficiencies: Did deregulation help?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 39-57.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:80:y:1998:i:2:p:314-325. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.