0000000000371230
AUTHOR
Beatrice Weder
Will Basel II Affect International Capital Flows To Emerging Markets?
This paper investigates the consequences of Basel II for international capital flows to emerging markets. The paper shows that the magnitude of effects critically depends on a number of assumptions, including: the mapping of risk weights to ratings, assumptions about required return on capital, assumptions about competition and diversion effects and the assumption that minimum capital requirements are binding constraints. The paper provides evidence on each of these assumptions and estimates their effect on interest margins and bank flows.Overall the results suggest that Basel II - taking into account the "Potential Modifications" of November 2001 - will have only a moderate impact on inter…
Basel II and bank lending to emerging markets: Evidence from the German banking sector
Abstract This paper investigates whether the new Basel Accord will induce a change in bank lending to emerging markets using a comprehensive new data set on German banks’ foreign exposure. We test two interlinked hypotheses on the conditions under which the change in the regulatory capital would leave lending flows unaffected. This would be the case if (i) the new regulatory capital requirement remains below the economic capital and (ii) banks’ economic capital to emerging markets already adequately reflects risk. On both accounts the evidence indicates that the new Basel Accord should have a limited effect on lending to emerging markets.
Obstacles Facing Smaller Business in Developing Countries
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a central role in economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries and transition economies. Yet small and medium-scale enterprise may suffer from a number of disadvantages compared with larger firms. Market imperfections, notably those caused by underdeveloped financial and legal systems, typically constrain small firms and severely limit their ability to grow. Economies of scale and entry cost favor large firms, and large entrepreneurs usually wield more political influence. Thus government rules and regulations may also be biased in favor of large firms. To the extent that market and government failures are more prevalent in develop…
German Bank Lending During Emerging Market Crises: A Bank Level Analysis
This paper studies German bank lending during the Asian and Russian crises, using a bank level data set, which has been compiled from credit data at the Deutsche Bundesbank. Our aim is to gain more insight into the pattern of German bank lending during financial crises in emerging markets. We find that German banks reacted to the Asian crisis mainly by reallocating their portfolios among emerging markets. This behaviour is consistent with active portfolio management and does not necessarily indicate a spontaneous reaction to the Asian crisis. By contrast, the banks' behaviour during the Russian crisis is characterised by a general withdrawal from emerging markets. The use of micro data allo…
Financial Sector Reform after the Crisis: Has Anything Happened?
We analyze the reaction of stock returns and CDS spreads of banks from Europe and the United States to four major regulatory reforms in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, employing an event study analysis. In contrast to the public perception that nothing has happened, we find that financial markets indeed reacted to the structural reforms enacted at the national level. All reforms succeeded in reducing bail-out expectations, especially for systemic banks. However, banks’ profitability was also affected, showing up in lower equity returns. The strongest effects were found for the Dodd-Frank Act (especially the Volcker rule), whereas market reactions to the German restructuring law were s…
A free press is bad news for corruption
Abstract This paper tests the proposition that a free press may be a powerful control on corruption. We find evidence of a significant relationship between more press freedom and less corruption in a large cross-section of countries. This result is robust to specification and sample and the relationship is not sensitive to the choice of a particular measure of corruption or of press freedom. Furthermore we present evidence which suggests that the direction of causation runs from higher press freedom to lower corruption.
Spillovers through banking centers: a panel data analysis of bank flows
Abstract This paper presents evidence that spillovers through bank lending contributed to the transmission of currency crises during the recent episodes of financial instability in emerging markets. The innovation of the paper is that it looks beyond aggregated measures of contagion into the structure of bank flows, disaggregating by banking centers. The main findings are that spillovers caused by banks’ exposures to a crisis country help predict flows in third countries after the Mexican and Asian crises, but not after the Russian crisis. In the latter, there is evidence of a generalized outflow from emerging markets. The importance of spillovers through banking centers suggests that count…