Examines issues in financial services, asset pricing, and hedging. This volume contains articles that deal with methods for assessing the safety and soundness of banks, rationales for and economic consequences of bank mergers, and more. It also includes the dynamics between foreign exchange and stock markets in Southeast Asian economies.

This is the 13th volume in a series on research in finance. This volume covers such topics as liquidity and market microstructure, predictability and time-varying risk in world equity markets and the structure of price discounts on private equity placements.

This volume covers such topics as financial distress and capital structure choice; optimal capital structure and valuation of the firm in multiperiod context; regression tests of the present value model of stock prices; and intra-industry information transfers and stock repurchases.

The volume starts with the trends in bank deposits (and hence available financial resources) in the region around North Dakota's Bakken Formation oil reserves. Then comes a contribution analyzing how various regulatory uncertainties are undermining real estate investment. We have a study of corporate governance and firm performance for companies listed on the Indian Exchange, plus an ex-dividend analysis of emerging country stocks listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), where the tax rate is higher on dividends than on capital gains. Further analysis of dividend policy includes a study of...