This paper argues that contractual savings (assets of pension funds and life insurance companies) contribute to the improvemnet of banks' efficiency, credit, and liquidity risk. The authors use bank level panel data across countries to assess the impact of contractual savings on bank efficiency...

Analysis of a panel data set for 1976-98 shows that on balance stock markets and banks positively influence economic growth; findings that do not result from biases induced by simultaneity, omitted variables, or unobserved country-specific effects

This new and comprehensive database on the regulation and supervision of banks in 107 countries should better inform advice about bank ewgulation and supervision and lower the marginal cost of empirical research