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The persistence of bank profits: what the stock market implies

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  • Mark E. Levonian

Abstract

This paper examines the speed with which abnormal economic profits vanish in the U.S. banking industry. A model is developed to infer expected speeds of profit adjustment from stock market and financial accounting data, deriving the rate of adjustment that is most consistent with observed cross-sectional relationships between bank stock prices and profitability. The model allows for the possibility that reported accounting income may be a biased and noisy signal of economic profit. Estimation is performed using generalized nonlinear least squares on a pooled series of cross sections. The results indicate that the expected rate of adjustment tends to be significantly greater than zero, although smaller than adjustment speeds found in studies of nonbank firms. The estimated speed of adjustment for negative profits is greater than for positive profits; for banks with high profit rates, the adjustment speed is near zero, implying that supernormal profits are very long-lived.

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  • Mark E. Levonian, 1994. "The persistence of bank profits: what the stock market implies," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 3-17.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfer:y:1994:p:3-17:n:2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Yvonne J. Acheampong & James E. Epperson & Timothy A. Park & Lewell F. Gunter, 2004. "Profitability adjustment patterns in international food and consumer products industries," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 31-43.
    3. Barry L. Bayus & Gary Erickson & Robert Jacobson, 2003. "The Financial Rewards of New Product Introductions in the Personal Computer Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(2), pages 197-210, February.
    4. Stefan Hirsch, 2018. "Successful In The Long Run: A Meta†Regression Analysis Of Persistent Firm Profits," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 23-49, February.
    5. Ali Soylu & Nazif Durmaz, 2013. "Profitability of Interest-Free versus Interest-Based Banks in Turkey," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 46(2), pages 176-188, June.
    6. Boris Durisin & Riccardo Lizzola, 2009. "Same as it ever was, really? An empirical study on the sustainability of superior performance of public companies in the US and in Europe from 1987 to 2007," KITeS Working Papers 011, KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy, revised 2009.
    7. Acheampong, Yvonne J. & Epperson, James E., 1998. "International Variation Of Return On Equity In The Food And Beverage Industries," Faculty Series 16690, University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.

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