This Financial Sector Stability Assessment on Nigeria discusses the macroeconomic performance and structure of the financial system. Although Nigerian economy experienced both domestic and external shocks in recent years, the economy continued to grow rapidly, achieving more than 7 percent...

This paper provides the first empirical analysis of the cross-country relationship between a direct measure of competitive conduct of financial institutions and banking system fragility. Using the Panzar and Rosse H-Statistic as a measure for competition in 38 countries during 1980-2003, we...

Losses may accrue to depositors at insolvent banks both at and after the time of official resolution. Losses at resolution occur because of poor closure rules and regulatory forbearance. Losses after resolution occur if depositors' access to their claims is delayed or "frozen." While the sources...

A rapidly growing empirical literature is studying the causes and consequences of bank fragility in present-day economies. The paper reviews the two basic methodologies adopted in cross-country empirical studies-the signals approach and the multivariate probability model-and their application to...

We study a monetary, general equilibrium economy in which banks exist because they provide intertemporal insurance to risk-averse depositors. A "banking crisis" is defined as a case in which banks exhaust their reserve assets. Under different model specifications, the banking industry is either...

The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at IMF conditionality in the banking sector. Our analysis shows that while such conditionality became more stringent following the Asian crisis, compliance has remained broadly unchanged, comparing unfavorably with other structural reforms. The...

This paper considers how an international lender of last resort (LOLR) can prevent self-fulfilling banking and currency crises in emerging economies. We compare two different arrangements: one in which the international LOLR injects liquidity into international financial markets, and one in...

This paper empirically analyzes the effects of a banking crisis on bank credit to the private sector for a panel of developing, developed, and transition economies for the period 1970-1998. The model illustrates how the behavior of the bank credit function changes during a banking crisis,...

When a country's banking system becomes more linked to the global banking network, does that system get more or less prone to a banking crisis? Using model simulations and econometric estimates based on a world-wide dataset, we find an M-shaped relationship between financial stability of a...

The assessment is a featured report of Turkey’s credit boom in the middle of 2011. The country faced the global crisis successfully because of earlier significant capital buffers. Overall, the country was healthy financially, but there was a slowdown in loan growth and market...