Search results for "banking"

Can Interpretable Reinforcement Learning Manage Prosperity Your Way?

2022

Personalisation of products and services is fast becoming the driver of success in banking and commerce. Machine learning holds the promise of gaining a deeper understanding of and tailoring to customers’ needs and preferences. Whereas traditional solutions to financial decision problems frequently rely on model assumptions, reinforcement learning is able to exploit large amounts of data to improve customer modelling and decision-making in complex financial environments with fewer assumptions. Model explainability and interpretability present challenges from a regulatory perspective which demands transparency for acceptance; they also offer the opportunity for improved insight into and unde…

Banks, Firms and Economic Culture: Economists and Research Centres in Interwar Italy

2020

In the interwar years, Italy experimented a strong growth of applied economic research. The foundation of research centers can be read and placed in a much wider international trend that emerged during the Great War. In this essay, we offer a map of the most important research centers, exploring the extensive web of relationships between the academia and the productive world. We then focus on a set of case studies, selected for their relevance. Section 2 is devoted to the banking sector, with reference to four important cases (Banca Commerciale Italiana, Banca d’Italia, Associazione Bancaria Italiana and Banco di Sicilia); section 3 to the industrial sector (IRI, Finsider, Ansaldo, Edison, …

Building up the Washington Consensus: Arthur I. Bloomfield as an Economic Adviser

2009

Morphological assessment of the umbilical cord with three-dimensional ultrasonography

2002

ABSTRACTThe long cylindrical cord covered by a layer of amnion that extends from the umbilicus of the fetus to the fetal surface of the placenta is known as the umbilical cord, or, in older medical textbooks, as funiculis umbilicalis. The two umbilical arteries extend as branches of the internal iliac arteries that emerge from the fetal body at the umbilicus, and run a helical course through the umbilical cord carrying venous blood to the placenta. In most normal placentas, the umbilical arteries anastomose within 2 cm of insertion into the placenta. The fetal umbilical vein emerges from the placenta and carries oxygenated blood to the fetus. The cord vessels are supported by a matrix of my…

Income structure, profitability and risk in the European banking sector: The impact of the crisis

2017

This study sets out to analyse whether the effect of the income structure on the risk and profitability of European banks has changed as a result of the crisis and if it varies according to banks’ specialisation in a particular type of banking business. To do so, it estimates the income structure over the period 2002–2012 using data for a panel of European banks. The study also examines if there are differences between investment-oriented banks and banks specialising in financial intermediation in terms of the effect of income structure on risk and profitability. Our findings show that an increase in the share of non-interest income has a negative impact on profitability, although the effec…

The real effect of financial crises in the European transition economies1

2010

The aim of this work is to assess the impact of financial crises on output for 11 European transition economies (CEECs). The results suggest that financial crises have a significant and permanent effect, lowering long-term output by about 17 percent. The effect is more important in smaller countries, with relative higher dependence on external financing, and in which the banking sector noticed more important financial disequilibria. We also found that fiscal policy measures have been the most efficient tools in dealing with the crises, while the role of monetary policy instruments has been rather blinded. Exchange rate resulted to be more a propagator than a crises absorber, while the IMF c…

Competition, risk taking, and governance structures in retail banking

2005

This paper investigates the extent to which the linkages between bank performance and governance structure affect deposits market competition and risk taking incentives when commercial banks compete with organizations with objectives different from profit maximization. These organizations include savings banks whose corporate and ownership structure yields an objective function that can incorporate labour expenses. It is found that such objective function enables the savings banks to capture a greater market share of bank deposits and to take on relatively less risk in their portfolio of investments. The empirical evidence from the Spanish retail banking sector documents these conclusions.

Credit Risk Disclosure Practices in the Annual Financial Reporting of Large Italian Banks

2019

Risk disclosure in banking is particularly important for the efficacy of market discipline, the assessment of bank performance, the efficiency of the financial market, and the overall stability of the financial system. The European banking union and the financial crisis have enhanced the strategic role of credit risk disclosure in banking. The topic of this chapter is the evaluation of credit risk disclosure practices in banks’ annual financial reporting. The empirical research is conducted on a sample of ten large Italian banks. The authors employ content analysis and provide a hybrid scoring model for the assessment of credit risk disclosure. The chapter provides empirical findings which …

The Real Effect of Financial Crises in the European Transition Economies

2009

The aim of this work is to assess the impact of financial crises on output for 11 European transition economies (CEECs). The results suggest that financial crises have a significant and permanent effect, lowering long-term output by about 17 percent. The effect is more important in smaller countries, with relative higher dependence on external financing, and in which the banking sector noticed more important financial disequilibria. We also found that fiscal policy measures have been the most efficient tools in dealing with the crises, while the role of monetary policy instruments has been rather blinded. Exchange rate resulted to be more a propagator than a crises absorber, while the IMF c…

A contested financial frontier: banking and empire building in Eritrea, c.1952–73

2021

AbstractThis article provides an account of the relationship between imperial Ethiopia and Eritrea in the realm of banking governance from the start of the federation to the last years of the imperial regime. It looks in particular at the relationship between the Ethiopian administrations and an Italian bank, Banco di Roma, which had its headquarters in Eritrea from 1948 to 1967 before moving to Addis Ababa. The struggle for control of the economic flows generated by the Italian bank is an index of the changes in centre–periphery linkages between Addis Ababa and the sub-regional centre of Asmara. Archival evidence highlights the multifaced nature of Ethiopian governance and the role perform…