Banking competition is expected to provide welfare gains by reducing monopoly rents and cost inefficiencies, favoring a reduction of loan rates and then investment. These expected gains are a major issue for transition countries, in which bank credit represents the largest source of external...

A large number of bank failures occurred in transition countries during the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. These failures were related to increases in non-performing loans and deteriorated cost efficiency of banks. This paper addresses the question of the causality between...

In this paper we propose a new approach to the assessment of excessive risk-taking by a banking sector. We use the portfolio approach to assess the optimal risk-return combination of a bank’s portfolio, based on data for 32 categories of loans. It provides a benchmark for the optimality...

This paper examines the relation between banks' capital and liquidity creation. This issue is of interest to determine the potential impact of higher capital requirements for banks on their liquidity creation, which may have particular importance with new Basel III reform demanding from banks...