The low depth of the Argentinian financial system has motivated doubts about the potential of development, even under relatively favorable macroeconomic expectations. Contributing to the analysis of this key industry, the current paper develops a methodology to measure the evolution of the...

We exploit the introduction of free banking laws in US states during the 1837-1863 period to examine the impact of removing barriers to bank entry on bank competition and economic growth. As governments were not concerned about systemic stability in this period, we are able to isolate the...

We describe the competitive environment of microcredit markets globally and we study the effects of competition on loan rates of microfinance institutions (MFIs). We use a new database from rating agencies, covering 379 for-profit and nonprofit MFIs in 67 countries over 2002-2008. First, we find...

Information sharing and collateral are both devices that help banks reduce the cost of adverse selection. We examine whether they are likely to be used as substitutes (information sharing reduces the need for collateral) or complements. We show that information sharing via a credit bureaus and...

We consider a model of financial intermediation with a monopolistic competition market structure. A non-monotonic relationship between the risk measured as a probability of default and the degree of competition is established.

Credit crunches, such as in the recent financial crisis, generally occur when banks are themselves funding constrained. We use this observation to repair the workhorse Stiglitz–Weiss model of credit rationing. Recent research has invalidated the distributional assumption on which that model is...

The role of the banking industry in export promotion cannot be over-emphasized as banks provide the necessary financial support for borrowers in various industries to undertake investment activities. With the help of an industry-level dataset on bilateral trade flows between various countries, I...

This paper rigorously investigates the determinants of bank competition for 146 countries over the sample period 1999–2011. The results employing both the Lerner index and the Boone indicator, reveal the distinctive characteristics of the competition drivers across different income groups of...

This study investigates the bank competition-stability nexus using a unique regulatory dataset provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank over the period 1994 to 2010. First, we use outright bank defaults as the most direct measure of bank risk available and contrast the results to weaker forms of bank...

This paper provides a new rationale for macroprudential regulation and studies its optimal design, implementation, and distributional consequences. In a partial equilibrium model where bank risk taking is subject to moral hazard, we show that although private contracting can solve the bank's...