x efficiency in australian banking an empirical investigation this paper empirically investigates the x eaciency technical and allocative in australian banks a non parametric method of data envelopment analysis dea has been used to arrive at the eaciency scores banks in this sample were found to have low levels of overall eaciency compared with the banks in the european countries and in the us the results indicate that as a source of overall ineaciency the technical component was more important than the allocative component thus the ineaciency in australian banks can be attributed to wasting of inputs technical ineaciency rather than choosing the incorrect input combinations allocative ineaciency domestic banks were found to be more eacient than foreign owned banks the study has important implications such as guiding the government policy regarding deregulation and mergers since the study pinpoints the sources of ineaciency it would also help banks with strategic planning 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the determinants of bank interest margins theory and empirical evidence this paper has developed a model of bank margins or spreads in which the bank is viewed as a risk averse dealer it was demonstrated that an interest spread or margin would always exist and that this was the result of transactions uncertainty faced by the bank moreover it was shown that this pure spread depended on four factors the degree of managerial risk aversion the size of transactions undertaken by the bank bank market structure and the variance of interest rates the model implied that liability and asset structures had to be analyzed together since they were directly interrelated through transactions uncertainty it was shown that because of this transactions uncertainty hedging behavior was perfectly rational within an expected utility maximizing framework extending the model from a structure with one kind of loan and deposit to loans and deposits with many maturities should lead to further interesting insights into margin determination especially as portfolio effects may become apparent

domestic and international determinants of bank profits foreign banks in australia abstract this paper develops and tests a model that integrates the existing multinational bank literature with the domestic bank profits literature using data for australia this paper demonstrates that an integrated model results in a small increase in explanatory power when compared to models drawn solely from the multinational banking literature the paper finds that profits are a negative function of competitor market share and bank licence status and a positive function of australian size and home gdp growth it is argued that there is incomplete integration between the market segments of domestic and multinational banks due to the first mover advantages of incumbent banks

the decision to establish a foreign bank branch or subsidiary an application of binary classification procedures this paper has two purposes first we model a key decision for inter national banks using data on the foreign direct investment fdi behavior of foreign banks in japan and california second we examine the utility of linear discriminant analysis and maximum likelihood logit analysis as statistical techniques for relating a qualitative dependent variable to a vector of inde pendent variables we apply these techniques to the decision by parent banks as to whether or not to have a subsidiary branch in california japan we treat the deci sion as a binary choice based on a consideration of various relevant factors the population for each of the countries consists of those foreign to the host country banks that already have a presence in the country the research ques tion then becomes given that a foreign bank is in the country does the extent of the parent bank s experience internationally and in the host country affect the probability that it will deepen its presence the choice of statis tical tools by which to examine this question gives rise to our methodological concerns

foreign owned banks in the united states earning market share or buying it foreign owned u s banks have been chronically unprofitable for more than a decade the authors employ a profit efficiency model introduced by allen n berger diana hancock and david b humphrey 1993 modified to be less sensitive to variations in asset size to estimate the relative profit efficiency of 62 foreign owned and 240 u s owned banks between 1985 and 1990 their results indicate that foreign owned banks were significantly less profit efficient than were u s owned banks primarily due to foreign banks reliance on expensive purchased funds for foreign owned banks the results are consistent with a strategy of sacrificing profits in exchange for fast growth and increased market share during the 1980s copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

the management of irrigation systems how to evoke trust and avoid prisoner s dilemma abstract the performance of canal irrigation systems depends partly on trust by farmers in the good faith and abilities of irrigation officials in india this trust is typically lacking there is instead a prisoners dilemma type syndrome of anarchy under the canals in which farmers lack the confidence that if they refrain from taking water out of turn they will get water on time and officials lack the confidence that if they work conscientiously to deliver the water on time farmers will refrain from rule breaking in east asia this syndrome of irrigation anarchy scarcely exists the reasons for the difference are partly to do with agro climatic conditions but they are also related to policy relevant variables of physical design and organizational arrangements within the constraints of agro climatic conditions features of east asian design and organization might usefully be transferred to indian conditions including break point reservoirs irrigation scheduling and monitoring separation of construction organization from operations and maintenance organization and catchment based operating agencies with their own revenue base

the entry and the activity level of foreign banks in italy an analysis of the determinants abstract although the theory of multinational banking has pointed out the importance of local profit opportunities the empirical evidence is still poor and deserves further investigation to this end we analyse entry decisions and activity levels of foreign banks operating in italy between 1983 and 1998 we consider 22 oecd countries 10 of which had at least one bank branch or subsidiary in italy entries and activity levels were related to the degree of economic integration as well as to the financial market features of the home country relative to italy unlike other studies besides economic integration the relative profitability of the banking activity proves to be a significant variable in that it highlights the importance of local market conditions in the past decade increased competition in the italian banking sector has reduced these profit opportunities driving foreign banks towards more innovative sectors of financial intermediation

modules for modernisation colonial irrigation in india and the technological dimension of agrarian change water control is central to the political economy of water distribution in large scale irrigation in india the changes in water distribution irrigation technology and agrarian development through the introduction of the block system technical devices called modules and volumetric water pricing in the nira left bank canal bombay presidency in the period 1900 40 are discussed to show the relationship of the three dimensions of water control technical managerial and socio political this analysis points to the crucial but contradictory role of the state in triggering processes of agricultural modernisation through intervention in water management the debate on the success of the block system continues to the present day but little progress has been made in designing solutions for inequality in water distribution the article suggests that liberalisation policies create political and institutional space for changing accountability relations and agricultural price regimes relevant to wa

location decisions of foreign banks and competitor remoteness this paper examines the role of competitor remoteness the weighted average distance of all competing banks to a host country on the location decision of a foreign bank it uses unique bilateral data on 1 199 foreign banks from 75 home countries present in 110 host countries it finds that besides bilateral distance competitor remoteness importantly drives foreign banks location decisions the impact of distance and competitor remoteness is stronger for non oecd home and host countries when the scale of foreign bank inward and outward investment is limited and for host countries where foreign banks dominate

the role of location related factors in u s banking involvement abroad an empirical examination this study examines the role of major location specific advantages in the international branch banking involvement of u s banks using pooled time series 1976 82 cross sectional thirty countries regression analysis this study finds that the u s business presence in foreign country has a strong positive effect on u s branch banking activity in that country in contrast the local market opportunity appears to have no significant effect these results hold for the entire set of countries as well as each of five subsets developed less developed european latin american and asian countries the openness of the host country to the establishment of new foreign bank branches does affect u s branch banking involvement this effect is most pronounced in the less developed countries particularly those in asia

factors affecting the performance of foreign owned banks in australia a cross sectional study abstract this study extends the existing literature of international banking by constructing a model of foreign intermediaries in australia an unresolved question is establishing those factors that result in banking across borders while a variety of theories attempt to explain international banking empirical tests are sparse mahajan a rangan n zardkoohi a 1996 journal of banking and finance 20 283 306 this study considers if the results to date apply in non us settings foreign bank size was found to be a positive function of bank licence parent size and time in australia and a negative function of australian net interest margins and fees the negative sign on net interest margins and fees is consistent with de young r nolle d 1996 journal of money credit and banking 28 622 636 foreign bank profits were a positive function of australian net interest margins and fees there was limited evidence of defensive expansion this paper concludes that foreign bank size is explained well by the existing theories of international banking but a wider model is appropriate for foreign bank profits

irrigation and imperialism the causes and consequences of a shift from subsistence to cash cropping dependency theorists and others have suggested that villagers in british india were compelled to grow cash crops under canal irrigation and this made them more vulnerable to famines evidence on cropping patterns in western india c 1900 shows that cultivators had good technical reasons for not irrigating subsistence crops in response to fiscal pressures and cultivators choices the government turned from a policy favouring subsistence crop irrigation to one favouring sugarcane paradoxically this new policy also stimulated foodgrain production providing greater subsistence security for the region

irrigation as a historical determinant of social capital in india a large scale survey analysis summary it is widely understood that the same policy interventions can have different outcomes depending on the social structures they are implemented in much less clear though is what fundamentally determines communities social capital or the way individuals in a society interact this study analyzes how irrigation practices a key feature of agricultural organization in india affect different indicators of social capital to this end an informative household survey is combined with detailed historical agricultural statistics on irrigation and grain cultivation the depth of the datasets allows for fine grained analysis of effects of different kinds of irrigation on groups with varying degrees of involvement in the agricultural production process i show a significant negative influence of specific types of irrigation on the prevalence of conflict and an increased likelihood for attendance of public meetings yet it is not possible to establish a broad and consistent relationship between agricultural indicators and social capital which contradicts previous research furthermore specific groups with varying incentive structures based on their land holding status and agricultural engagement appear to be affected by different kinds of irrigation the results underline the need for a multidimensional analysis of both social capital and agricultural organization as well as their interaction i do not find evidence supporting the rice theory of culture

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

positive theories of multinational banking eclectic theory versus internalisation theory the choice of an appropriate paradigm to consider banks motivation to enter a new market and their subsequent performance is an important issue in multinational banking this paper discusses this issue within the context of two competing theories of the multinational enterprise and the special theories of banking as applied to the multinational enterprise the conclusion of this paper is that while it may not be possible to empirically distinguish between the propositions of eclectic theory and internalisation theory intemalisation theory offers a framework with greater internal consistency for the study of the multinational bank further any empirical studies must be conducted within the framework of the appropriate special theories consistent with internalisation theory these special theories have developed over time in an unstructured fashion and the application of internalisation theory provides a cohesive framework within which to analyse these theories

cost structures in multinational and domestic banking abstract prior research on international banking has proposed many reasons for the multinationalization of u s banks but provided little empirical support for its propositions using a pooled time series data set from 1987 to 1990 this study analyzes the ray and expansion path scale economies and expansion path subadditivity of u s based multinational banks mnbs both at the firm and the plant levels it also measures and analyzes inefficiencies for these banks inefficiencies are measured relative to a thick frontier cost function a similar analysis is conducted for domestic banks dbs for comparison purposes no support is found for the prior belief that similar cost structures exist for mnbs and dbs in general we find that mnbs are able to fully exploit economies of scale and face lesser diseconomies from joint production and lower inefficiencies than dbs

the fruits and fallacies of neoliberalism the case of irrigation policy abstract neoliberal doctrine provides the analytic basis for a convincing explanation and critique of irrigation policy in the third world there is a strong case for subjecting capital and recurrent decisions to the discipline of scarcity pricing however it is rarely practicable to apply scarcity pricing rigorously because of the economic and technical infeasibility of volumetric water pricing in most third world irrigation schemes the taiwanese experience illustrates that political and institutional mechanisms for promoting managerial performance can be effective where the neoliberal prescription fails

the determinants of us banking activity abroad abstract the banking industry provides an excellent example of the internationalization of world business and economic interdependencies across countries analysis of the past growth of international banking operations can also prove useful to banks interested in augmenting their current business or expanding their international coverage and to banks who anticipated future competition in their markets from new or strengthened foreign competitors this study provides the most comprehensive examination of the development of us bank branches in other countries is presented and tested in order to facilitate the understanding of the expansion of international banking

an application of the theory of foreign direct investment to multinational banking in ldcs for assessing the determinants of mnbs expansion into ldcs a model that incorporates both supply and demand factors is constructed a reduced form of the model is tested by using pooled data over the period 1975 1982 for a sample of twenty three ldcs the results of the study indicate that market size the presence of multinational corporations from the home country the extent of economic development and the balance of payments are all significant determinants of the growth of mnbs in ldcs

characteristics determining the efficiency of foreign banks in australia abstract the factors determining foreign bank efficiency are investigated using a three stage research method it is found that host market incumbency reduces efficiency of foreign banks in australia resulting in over use of inputs factors underlying the limited global advantage hypothesis of berger et al berger allen n deyoung robert genay hesna udell gregory f 2000 globalisation of financial institutions evidence from cross border banking performance brookings wharton papers on financial service 3 23 120 are identified in that nationality specific factors represented by dummy variables are not significant once other relevant effects are controlled for parent profitability is not found to result in increased host nation efficiency while parent credit rating effects are mixed some evidence is presented that banks from more financially sophisticated nations are more efficient the implications of these results are explored from the perspectives of bank management and bank regulators

determinants of the performance of japanese financial institutions in australia 1987 1992 this paper constructs a model that attempts to explain the performance of japanese financial institutions in australia in general the model proposed performs well for size measures but comparatively poorly for measures of profitability size as measured by home country equity was found to increase both australian assets and australian profitability institutional features in both australia and japan were found to have their greatest impact upon size measures net interest margin differences were found to have no significant relationship with any performance measure used however the results are not sufficiently conclusive to produce a definitive model to explain the performance of foreign owned banks in australia