The recent wave of foreign investment in China's banks and the prospects of further opening of the banking sector under the WTO agreement suggest that foreign banks are likely to play an increasingly important role in China. This paper takes stock of the involvement of foreign banks in the...

Despite far-reaching banking sector reforms and a prolonged period of macroeconomic stability and strong economic growth, financial intermediation in Armenia has lagged behind other transition countries, and interest rate spreads have remained higher than in most Central and Eastern European...

Recent developments have increased questions about vulnerabilities in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEE) that are experiencing credit booms. This paper analyzes the role of foreign-owned banks in these credit booms. The results show that the CEE countries depend on foreign banks, and...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the impact of financial liberalization on the performance of Indian commercial banks. The analysis focuses on examining the behavior and determinants of bank intermediation costs and profitability during the liberalization period. The empirical...

This paper examines bank credit growth in emerging markets before, during, and after the 2008-09 financial crisis using bank-level data, focusing on the role of bank ownership. Credit growth by foreign banks lagged behind that of domestic banks in 2009 in Asia, and in 2010 in Latin America and...

Did the occurrence of systemic banking crises in the 1990s and 2000s significantly alter the behavior of banks in the Mercosur? The objective of this paper is to answer this question by analyzing changes in bank behavior after crises in the Mercosur region. To our knowledge, this is the first...

This paper documents the great divide in the level of financial development between the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 7 countries and the more advanced economies in transition, in particular those of Central and Eastern Europe and Baltic states. It discusses the roots of financial...

Bank profits are high in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to other regions. This paper uses a sample of 389 banks in 41 SSA countries to study the determinants of bank profitability. We find that apart from credit risk, higher returns on assets are associated with larger bank size, activity...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model framework for the analysis of interactions between banking sector risk, sovereign risk, corporate sector risk, real economic activity, and credit growth for 15 European countries and the United States. It is an integrated macroeconomic systemic...

This study discusses issues of access to bank credit in Sub-Saharan Africa, and examines measures that could help facilitate access by the private sector to bank credit. It reviews in particular obstacles to credit small- and medium-scale enterprises and agriculture, and examines progress in the...