Despite the fact that banks in Central Europe are burdened by extraordinarily high bad loan ratios, the recent financial crisis in South East Asia and Russia, has not led to a massive failure of banks in the region. In this paper, we study economic trends and policies that may have helped to...

Part of the Polish transformation process has been an opening of the domestic financial market to foreign entrants. While the number of MNBs rises from zero to fifteen within six years, the ratio of bank credit to private and public enterprises relative to GDP decreases continuously after 1991....

Global deregulation of current and capital account is often touted as successful means to reduce poverty and inequality. On the face of it, though, the evidence does not support this claim. Rising intra-country inequality is widespread, income inequality between countries grows, the absolute...

Recent studies have conjectured that there may be a link between financial liberalization and financial instability in emerging economies. Most of these studies, however, do not investigate whether emerging economies are becoming structurally more vulnerable to currency and banking crises. In...

While the South East Asian financial crisis spread to Russia and Brazil, the transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe seem to be largely unaffected by international financial contagion. The lack of recent banking crises in Central and Eastern Europe is the more surprising considering...

The number of multinational banks have increased in transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe, while the amount of real credit has simultaneously decreased. Based on the cases of Poland and Hungary during the first six years of economic transition this paper investigates if there is a...

Real investment in Poland declined from 1990 to 1993, and only slowly recovered, while real credit decreased for a number of years, too. Has declining credit adversely affected investment? Controlling for industry and time fixed effect, and using dynamic panel data techniques, I estimate an...

Financial market recommendations for less industrialized economies, particularly in the wake of the recent financial crises, have included a push for more international financial competition. The entry of multinational banks (MNBs) into developing economies is supposed to create more market...