Size, Risk, and Governance in European Ranking

摘要

The recent great financial crisis (GFC), characterized by sharp increases in bank and shadow bank failures in many industrial countries, has intensified interest in bank performance and its determinants, in particular, bank size, risk, and governance, as highlighted in the book's title. This volume is a welcomed addition to the empirical literature in banking. It sheds additional light on bank performance-structure relationships, primarily for European banks. In contrast, the attention of almost all previous empirical researchers in this area to date has been focused on U.S. banks. As the performance of at least the larger European banks during the GFC appears to have been considerately poorer, on average, than that of larger U.S. banks, the latter may not have been representative. By providing additional empirical information on the performance of non-U.S. banks, the book makes an important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of bank behavior across varying economic, legal, political, regulatory, and institutional environments. It is interesting to note that none of the three coauthors are from the United States.