Using data from 1996 to 2000, we investigate the effects of ownership, especially by a strategic foreign owner, on bank efficiency for eleven transition countries in an unbalanced panel consisting of 225 banks and 856 observations. Applying stochastic frontier estimation procedures, we compute...

It is generally thought that there is a negative long-term relationship between inflation and growth and a positive long-term relationship between financial development and growth. The existing empirical literature suggests that the finance-growth relationship is more robust than the...

It is generally thought that there is a negative long-term relationship between inflation and growth and a positive long-term relationship between financial development and growth. The existing empirical literature suggests that the finance-growth relationship is more robust than the...

Although the performance and privatization of transition banks have been widely studied already, little is known about their risk taking and risk management activities. We use a new EBRD survey data set of banks to examine risk taking by banks in the transition countries. We find no indication...

There are two interrelated usages of the term Bretton Woods in international macroeconomics. First it refers to the institutional structure put in place to govern international financial relationships in the post World War II era. Second it refers to the way in which the financial interactions...

Although the finance-growth nexus has become firmly entrenched in the empirical literature, studies that question the strength of the empirical results have appeared and seem to have become more frequent as well. In this paper we reexamine the core crosscountry panel results that established the...

The transition economies were remarkably successful in curbing the inflation that took place after the initial transition and shocks and, more recently, most of the countries have brought inflation down to the levels found in major developed countries. In this paper we review the experiences and...

The robustness of the cross-sectional relationship between the size of a country's financial sector and its rate of economic growth is by now well established. In this article, we examine whether the strength of this relationship varies with the inflation rate. Using five-year averages of...

This timely reader of seminal papers published by Palgrave on behalf of Comparative Economic Studies, examines how and why foreign banks enter emerging markets and the positive benefits they bring to the host countries.