The authors investigate whether firms'access to external financing, to fund growth differs between market-based, and bank-based financial systems. Using firm-level data for forty countries, they compute the proportion of firms in each country that relies on external finance, and examine how that...

Using bank data for 80 countries for 1988-95, the authors show that differences in interest margins and bank profitability reflect various determinants: bank characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, explicit and implicit bank taxes, regulation of deposit insurance, general financial structure,...

Much of the substantial literature on banking crises, focuses on early warning indicators. The authors look at what happens to the economy, and the banking sector after a banking crisis breaks out. Much of the theory of banking crises assigns a central role to depositor runs, with vulnerability...

Using bank level measures of competition and co-dependence, the authors show a robust positive relationship between bank competition and systemic stability. Whereas much of the extant literature has focused on the relationship between competition and the absolute level of risk of individual...

This paper examines time-series and cross-country variations in default risk co-dependence in the global banking system. The authors construct a default risk measure for all publicly traded banks using the Merton contingent claim model, and examine the evolution of the correlation structure of...

Why does a country's legal origin influence its firms'access to finance? Using data from over 4,000 firms in 38 countries, the authors show that firms in countries with French legal origin face significantly higher obstacles in accessing external finance than firms in common law countries. Next,...

Japanese banks are promising sources of capital for developing countries wishing to finance a balance of payments gap. This paper shows that Japanese banks are highly capitalized in terms of market value; much of their capital is"hidden capital,"the divergence between accounting and stock market...

This paper updates the Demirguç-Kunt and Sobaci (2001) cross-country deposit insurance database and extends it in several important dimensions. This new data set identifies both recent adopters and the ones that were not covered earlier due to a lack of data. Moreover, for the first time, it...

The authors study the impact of bank concentration, regulations, and national institutions on the likelihood of suffering a systemic banking crisis. Using data on 79 countries over the period 1980-97, they find that crises are less likely (1) in more concentrated banking systems, (2) in...

The global financial crisis has given greater credence to the idea that active state involvement in the financial sector can be helpful for stability and development. There is now evidence that, for example, lending by state-owned banks has helped in mitigating the impact of the crisis on...