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This paper investigates the performance characteristics of Turkish private and state‐owned commercial banks for the 1986– 1990 period. The link between interest margins and maturity structures of bank asset and liabilities is specified. Empirical evidence indicates that banks with longer positions experienced lower interest margins, a finding consistent with the presence of a downward sloping yield curve during most of this period. The results document that bank margins suffered after the financial reforms of 1988. Further, compared to private banks, state‐owned banks exhibited lower interest margins and longer maturities, which is a direct consequence of portfolio constraints and management style of banks.

This paper explored the new features of emerging stock markets, in order to point out the most associated indicators of increasing stock return volatility, which may lead to instability of emerging markets. The study covers a sample of five geographical areas of emerging economies, including Mexico, Korea, South Africa, Turkey, and Malaysia. It used the backward multiple‐regression technique to examine the relationship between monthly changes of stock price indices as dependent variable and the associated predicting local as well as international variables, which represent possible causes of increasing price volatility and initiating crises in emerging stock markets. The study covered monthly data for a period of forty‐eight months from January 1997 to December 2000. The study revealed that stock trading volume and currency exchange rate respectively represent the highest positive correlation to the emerging stock price changes; thus represent the most predicting variables of increasing price volatility. International stock price index, deposit interest rate, and bond trading volume were moderate predicting variables for emerging stock price volatility. While changes in inflation rate showed the least positive correlation to stock price volatility, thus represents the least predicting variable.