This paper studies whether compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCP) improves bank soundness. BCP compliance assessments provide a unique source of information about the quality of bank supervision and regulation around the world. The authors find a...

This study finds that banks receive more favorable Moody's financial strength ratings in countries with better compliance with Basel Core Principles related to information provision. The results are robust to controlling for broad indexes of institutional quality, macroeconomic variables,...

We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when foreign banks are better at monitoring high-end customers than domestic banks, their entry benefits those customers but may hurt other customers and worsen welfare....

We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when foreign banks are better at monitoring high-end customers than domestic banks, their entry benefits those customers but may hurt other customers and worsen welfare....

This paper considers how a comprehensive set of factors relates to financial sector performance in low-income countries (LICs). It finds that corruption and inflation are associated with a shallower and less efficient financial system, while legal origin and characteristics of the supervisory...

We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when foreign banks are better at monitoring high-end customers than domestic banks, their entry benefits those customers but may hurt other customers and worsen welfare....

This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms, covering 91 economies over 1973-2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of...

This paper studies whether the policies that, over the past decades, liberalized banking systems around the world have resulted in deeper credit markets. To measure banking sector reforms we use a new index that tracks policy changes in five separate areas for 91 countries over 1973-2005. We...