This paper analyzes the evolution of bank funding structures in the run up to the global financial crisis and studies the implications for financial stability, exploiting a bank-level dataset that covers about 11,000 banks in the U.S. and Europe during 2001?09. The results show that banks with...

This paper is an empirical analysis of competitiveness in the banking system of four out of the five East African Community (EAC) countries2. The results show that the degree of competition is low due to a combination of structural and socio-economic factors. By way of preview, the analysis...

Understanding the impact of the asymmetric tax treatment of debt and equity on the capital structures of financial institutions is critical to shaping and assessing responses to the problem of excessive leverage that underlay the 2009 financial crisis - but there is no empirical evidence to draw...

This paper assesses the impact of the geographic diversification of bank holding company (BHC) assets across the United States on their market valuations. Using two novel identification strategies based on the dynamic process of interstate bank deregulation, we find that exogenous increases in...

This Technical Note focuses on banking sector structure in Germany. Germany’s banking system comprises three “pillars” private commercial banks, public sector banks, and cooperative banks—distinguished by the ownership structure and business orientation. The German banking system...

We study versions of a general equilibrium banking model with moral hazard under either constant or increasing returns to scale of the intermediation technology used by banks to screen and/or monitor borrowers. If the intermediation technology exhibits increasing returns to scale, or it is...

This note summarizes the stress tests undertaken for the German banking system as part of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) update. Solvency tests for the German banking system assessed medium-term vulnerabilities under two adverse macroeconomic scenarios. The tests considered a...

This Selected Issues paper examines the progress of Slovenia by focusing on four interrelated topics that are critically important to the evolution of the transition process and provides insights into the work that lies ahead. The paper concludes that the voucher-based privatization process has...

This paper examines the performance of Islamic banks (IBs) and conventional banks (CBs) during the recent global crisis by looking at the impact of the crisis on profitability, credit and asset growth, and external ratings in a group of countries where the two types of banks have significant...

We use the rise and dispersion of sovereign spreads to tell the story of the emergence and escalation of financial tensions within the eurozone. This process evolved through three stages. Following the onset of the Subprime crisis in July 2007, spreads rose but mainly due to common global...