Purpose - Banks are institutions that inject money in the economy and help to boost it when there are problems in some markets, especially in productive sectors. In this way, analysing the competition in this sector is an important tool for policymakers as non-competitive behaviour could affect...

The relationships among competition in the financial sector, access of firms to external financing, and associated economic growth are ambiguous in theory. Moreover, measuring competition in the financial sector can be complex. In this paper Claessens and Laeven first estimate for 16 countries a...

Empirical research about structure, conduct and performance in banking markets has developed mostly independently from the microeconomic theory of banking. The present paper reviews the literature by focusing on the links between theoretical and empirical research. It considers basic conditions,...

Financial intermediation is low in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to other regions of the world. This paper examines the determinants of bank interest margins using a sample of 456 banks in 41 SSA countries. The results show that market concentration is positively associated with interest...

Using firm level data for a sample of 78 country markets in 2012, this paper analyzes the relationship between the severity of non-tariff measures related to the entry and operation of foreign firms and firm profitability in the commercial banking sector, and differentiates the impact of these...

We examine the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2011. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by...

Using a sample of 330 banks in 29 African countries, this paper investigates the importance of globalization and institutional quality for bank competition. The results suggest that competition increased in the period of 2002-2005, before decreasing somewhat between 2006 and 2007 and increasing...

The present study seeks to analyse the provisions of the 2013 Charter of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which is one of the most important international financial fora composing the architecture governing the international financial system. Its scope is confined to institutional and...