This paper investigates the potential relationships between financial structures and economic outcomes. The empirical results that withstand a battery of methods suggest that some financial intermediation structures are likely to be more closely related to positive economic outcomes than others....

Financial intermediation is low in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to other regions of the world. This paper examines the determinants of bank interest margins using a sample of 456 banks in 41 SSA countries. The results show that market concentration is positively associated with interest...

Rollover risk imposes market discipline on banks' risk-taking behavior but it can be socially costly. I present a two-sided model in which a bank simultaneously lends to a firm and borrows from the short-term funding market. When the bank is capital constrained, uncertainty in asset quality and...

An important role for bank capital is that of a buffer against unexpected losses. As uncertainty about these losses increases, the theory predicts an increase in the optimal level of bank capital. This paper investigates this implication empirically with U.S. Commercial Banks data and finds...

The Global Financial Crisis unleashed changes in the operating and regulatory environments for large international banks. This paper proposes a novel taxonomy to identify and track business model evolution for the 30 Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). Drawing from banks' reporting, it...

Given their pegged exchange rate regimes, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries usually adjust their policy rates to match shifting U.S. monetary policy. This raises the important question of how changes in U.S. monetary policy affect banks in the GCC. We use bank-level panel data, exploiting...

Determinants of bank-level credit growth in Saudi Arabia are investigated by applying a panel approach to data spanning 2000-15. Strong bank balance sheet conditions, economic activity, and oil prices support bank lending. Reduced bank concentration appears to have helped. Lending remained...