On the Performance of Differently Regulated Financial Institutions : Some Empirical Evidence

The paper raises two questions about the industrial economics of banking : first, why are financial market configurations so different across nations ? We discuss the theoretical arguments by following the sequence Regulation-Structure-Performance (section 2). Second, do the differences in regulation and structure matter ? Section 3 provides empirical evidence pertaining to that question. Throughout the paper we refer to two polar cases of financial systems : market (M)-and bank (b)- based systems. As for banks, we distinguish between specialised and universal banks. Universal banking is a particular institutional representation of B-systems. A first empirical test relating macroeconomic growth to financial variables suggests that these variables matter. We then test with a set of 88 banks the effects of regulatory and structural variables on the level and variability of bank performance. We conclude that universal banks achieve a better risk-return trade-off, due to superior monitoring and information collection capacity.