This paper analyzes the different options - liquidation, federalization, privatization and restructuring - that the Brazilian state government had for the transformation of state banks under the Programa de Incentivo a Reducao do Setor Publico Estadual na Atividade Bancaria (PROES) in the late...

Motivated by public policy debates about bank consolidation and conflicting theoretical predictions about the relationship between the market structure of the banking industry and bank fragility, this paper studies the impact of bank concentration, bank regulations, and national institutions on...

Analysis of a panel data set for 1976-1998 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.Beck and Levine investigate the impact of...

Deposit insurance schemes and bank failure resolution systems are asked to fulfill conflicting public policy objectives: On the one hand, they are supposed to protect small depositors and prevent contagion risks from bank runs; on the other hand, they are supposed to minimize aggressive risk...

Beck, Demirguc-Kunt, and Levine examine the impact of bank supervision on the financing obstacles faced by almost 5,000 corporations across 49 countries. They find that firms in countries with strong official supervisory agencies that directly monitor banks tend to face greater financing...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks' lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms' credit constraints at two...

Using a novel enterprise survey from Kenya (FinAccess Business), we document a strong positive association between the use of mobile money as a method to pay suppliers and access to trade credit. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous entrepreneurs, imperfect credit...

Motivated by public policy debates about bank consolidation and conflicting theoretical predictions about the relationship between the market structure of the banking industry and bank fragility, this paper studies the impact of bank concentration, bank regulations, and national institutions on...

Public policy debates and theoretical disputes motivate this paper%u2019s examination of (i) the relationship between bank concentration and banking system fragility and (ii) the mechanisms underlying this relationship. We find no support for the view that concentration increases the fragility...