Financial instruments such as documentary credit, structured finance and derivatives have proved their value in commodity trade. However, the sophistication of these instruments can also make them a tool for financial fraud. This report discusses how, using commodity market instruments such as...

Sinds het begin van het transitieproces in Midden- en Oost-Europa is het belang van buitenlandse banken in de financiering van het lokale bedrijfsleven sterk toegenomen. Uit onze analyse, gebaseerd op een combinatie van BIS- en BankScopecijfers voor 11 transitielanden blijkt dat dochters van...

We analyse foreign bank penetration in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)and its influence on private sector credit,taking into account both cross-border credit and credit by foreign bank subsidiaries. By combining BIS and BankScope data into a unique database we make a clear distinction between...

We study whether foreign and domestic banks in Central and Eastern Europe have reacted differently to business cycle conditions and host country banking crises. Our unique panel dataset comprises data of more than 300 banks for the period 1993-2000, with detailed information on bank ownership....

On the basis of focused interviews with managers of foreign parent banks and their affiliates in Central Europe and the Baltics, we analyse foreign banks’ small business lending and internal capital markets. This allows us to complement the standard empirical literature, which has difficulty...

The purpose of this article is to assess how the changing operations of international banks in emerging countries in the last decades have altered the risks they face as well as their mitigation techniques. The recent expansion of the international banking business through the setup of branches...

The dollarization of bank deposits and credit is widespread in developing countries, resulting in varying degrees of currency mismatches in domestic financial intermediation, which in turn may accentuate balance sheet problems and thus financial fragility. It is widely argued that flexible...

This paper develops a new model of international private debt financing. It shows the possibility of discontinuity in the amount of financial intermediation when the intermediary is inefficient. The model suggests a mechanism that can generate the following sequence of events: A period of...