This paper studies whether the policies that, over the past decades, liberalized bankingsystems around the world have resulted in deeper credit markets. To measure banking sectorreforms we use a new index that tracks policy changes in five separate areas for 91 countriesover 1973-2005. We find...

The paper investigates EU banks' profitability through the recent financial cycle using banklevelbalance sheet and income statement data. We find that banks that were more successfulat protecting their profits had a less pronounced deterioration in loan quality and a largerimprovement in cost...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON FOREIGN BANKS IN POOR COUNTRIES -- III. CREAM-SKIMMING EFFECTS OF FOREIGN BANK ENTRY: THEORY -- IV. THE EMPIRICAL TEST: METHODOLOGY AND DATA -- V. RESULTS FROM THE EMPIRICAL TESTS -- VI. CONCLUSIONS -- Appendix I. Welfare...

This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms covering 91 economies over 1973–2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of...

This paper studies whether compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCP) improves bank soundness. BCP compliance assessments provide a unique source of information about the quality of bank supervision and regulation around the world. The authors find a...

We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when domestic banks are better than foreign banks at monitoring soft information customers, foreign bank entry may hurt these customers and worsen welfare. The model also...

This paper considers how a comprehensive set of factors relates to financial sector performance in low-income countries (LICs). It finds that corruption and inflation are associated with a shallower and less efficient financial system, while legal origin and characteristics of the supervisory...

This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms, covering 91 economies over 1973–2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of...