The government of Hungary has contained the main fiscal risks of the transition to a market economy. It has paid off and resolved most problems in the banking and enterprise sectors. Since 1995 it has implemented fiscal adjustment with the objective of long-term fiscal stability rather than an...

In reforming the financial sector in transition economies, one important debate is whether governments should try to reform existing state-owned banks (the rehabilitation approach) or whether a new private banking system should be allowed to emerge (a new entry approach). Or should there be a...

In recent years, foreign bank participation has increased tremendously in several developing countries. In Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, for example, more than fifty percent of banking assets are now in foreign-controlled banks. In Asia, Africa, The Middle East, and...

The authors examine the decisions policy-makers in transitional socialist economies must make: how to define the asset liability structure of state owned enterprises and banks as they are privatized. They conclude that the many loans issued by state-owned enterprises under socialism are impeding...

Over the past 10 years the three Baltic republics have undertaken significant restructuring of their banking sectors, supported by the World Bank through three projects: the Financial Institutions Development Project in Estonia, the Enterprise and Financial Sector Restructuring Project in...

The recently completed privatization of Mexican commercial banks may be one of the most successful financial operations in recent years. In 13 months, the Mexican authorities were able to sell 18 banks to private groups of Mexican investors for more than US$13 billion total - more than three...

The authors contribute to both the finance-growth literature and the community banking literature by testing the effects of the relative health of community banks on economic growth, and investigating potential transmission mechanisms for these effects using data from 1993-2000 on 49 nations....

Top commercial banks seemed to have weathered the debt crisis, however it remains to be seen whether their current strength and stability will help reestablish normal credit relationships between private banks and the developing countries. Some losses by private creditors are likely to be part...

Existing evidence on the effect of foreign bank penetration on lending to small and medium-size enterprises is ambiguous. Case studies of developing countries show that foreign banks lend less to such firms than domestic banks do. But cross-country studies find that foreign bank entry fosters...

Many countries in Eastern Europe assigned banks the responsibility for restructuring enterprises. Such restructuring had five components: 1) triage of enterprises into three classes -- viable, viable with debt relief, and nonviable; 2) work with management of overindebted firms on a restructuring...