Grossly inefficient banking systems are one of the major impediments to a rapid and sustained upswing in Europe's emerging market economies (EMEs for short). Although the transition from plan to market necessitates a large-scale re-allocation of domestic capital and easy access to foreign...

In developed market economies, banks and other financial institutions perform a variety of vital tasks: they mobilise savings and allocate funds to the optimal uses, they pool investment risks, they exploit scale economies in the evaluation and monitoring of borrowers, and they match the...

This paper documents the financial and institutional developments of China during the past two decades, when China was successfully transformed from a rigid centralplanning economy to a dynamic market economy following its unique path. We empirically examine the relationship between financial...