State-controlled listed firms in China receive preferential treatment when borrowing from commercial banks; in contrast, private controlled firms rely on informal finance and on trade credit. We argue for and find evidence that private firms located in higher social trust regions use more trade...

We investigate the effect of strategic investors on bank efficiency in the context of regional economic development. The data on Chinese city commercial banks operating regionally are well-suited for the study. Our findings suggest that strategic investors significantly increase efficiency in...

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of collateral requirements for loans that are extended to small and medium-sized enterprises in less-developed countries. Our primary data source consists of the results from firms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia from the Business Environment...

This paper investigates the consequences of the liquidity shocks in wholesale funding markets during the 2007–2009 financial crisis on bank lending and corporate financing. We show that banks that relied more heavily on wholesale funding contracted lending more severely than banks that relied...

We use a new dataset of de jure measures of trade, capital account, product market, and domestic financial regulation for 91 countries from 1973 to 2005 to test Rajan and Zingales’s (2003) interest group theory of financial development. In line with the theory, we find strong evidence that...

This paper explores the determinants of financial development by focusing on the role played by barriers to the diffusion of financial technology. These barriers are measured using human genetic distance from the technology frontier. The results based on cross-sectional data for 123 countries...

Distributional properties of emerging market returns may impact on investor ability and willingness to diversify. Investors may also place greater weighting on downside losses, compared to upside gains. Using individual equities in a range of emerging Asian markets, we investigate the potential...

In credit card markets banks provide both payment and credit services. Two regulations were recently enacted in the Turkish credit card market: one on payment services in 2005 and the other on credit services in 2006. By employing the well-known Panzar and Rosse (1982, 1987) method and a unique...

Based on the hand-collected board structure data of 277 listed banks across 55 countries, and the bank regulation and supervision database compiled by the World Bank, this paper provides the first cross-country assessment of the impacts of bank regulations on board independence of banks. In line...

This paper shows that the contractual arrangement of ‘banking correspondents’ has eliminated entry barriers for the provision of banking services in Brazil. With the bank correspondents, banks are allowed to reach the almost 2200 municipalities without bank branches in 2000, connecting 45...