This paper examines the impact of bank regulations, concentration, inflation, and national institutions on bank net interest margins using data from over 1,400 banks across 72 countries while controlling for bank-specific characteristics. The data indicate that tighter regulations on bank entry...

Non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) comprise a mixed bag of institutions, ranging from leasing, factoring, and venture capital companies to various types of contractual savings and institutional investors (pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds). The common characteristic of...

The authors analyze the relationship between the development of contractual savings institutions and banks'efficiency, credit, and liquidity risks. They discuss the potential mechanisms through which the development of contractual savings institutions may affect the banking sector. They show...

Using data on country funds, the authors study how differential access to information affects international investment. They find that past changes in net asset values (NAVs) and discounts predict current country fund prices more commonly than prices and discounts predict NAVs. The price (NAV)...

The home equity bias is one of the many puzzles existing in international finance. This puzzle is characterized by the concentration of domestic equity in any investor's portfolio, which is in contradiction with the benchmark of full diversification in a world mutual fund. Based on Admati's...

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...

Firms often cite financing constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Global capital flows, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease the financing constraints of host country firms. But if incoming foreign investors borrow heavily from domestic banks, foreign direct investment...

The author documents the precise costs of debt and equity issuance, both domestically and internationally, for firms in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Costs include investment banking and legal fees, regulatory and exchange listing costs, rating agency fees, and expenditures for marketing and...

The stimulation of private saving is essential to both stabilization and structural adjustment in the transition economies. Private saving in these countries has declined sharply since independence, and this decline has been a factor in the onset of extreme inflation because governments have...

The author investigates whether the credit channel is a key monetary transmission mechanism in the Republic of Korea, especially after its recent financial crisis. To identify the existence of a distinctive credit channel (especially the bank lending channel), he applies two empirical tests to...