The global financial crisis has highlighted the potential of financial conditions for influencing real economic activity. We examine the linkages between the financial and real sectors in the euro area, finding that (i) bank loan supply responds negatively to declines in bank soundness; (ii) a...

The paper assesses the effects of certain institutional factors on financial sector development in Sub- Saharan Africa (SSA). Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is applied to determine the extent to which these institutions affect the financial sector, and to suggest which institutions play a more...

The paper utilizes data on high-tech Indian firms for 1996-2007 to explain the association between leverage and productivity. Accordingly, firm-level productivity measures are regressed on a set of control variables, which includes leverage among the regressors. The findings suggest that low...

Within capitals establishing, the enterprises have at their disposal a diversity of offers, but for each of them, they have to pay a certain price, named capital’s cost. The resource for this price’s payment is going to be “produced” into economic processes, where the enterprise’s...

In this paper, we estimate the interest rate pass-through from money market to bank interest rates using various heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques to address bank heterogeneity. Based on our micro-level data from the Czech Republic, the results indicate that the nature of interest...

Chinese banks generate large profits and have relatively low nonperforming loans. However, good financial performance does not, in itself, guarantee that banks efficiently intermediate the economy's financial resources. This paper first examines how efficient Chinese banks are in financial...

This paper examines empirically the determinants of financial market development in Africa with an emphasis on banking systems and stock markets. The results show that income level, creditor rights protection, financial repression, and political risk are the main determinants of banking sector...

The paper proposes a framework for examining the process of financial market development. The framework, consistent with the functional view of financial system design, is anchored in studying the incentives facing the key players in financial markets-borrowers, lenders, liquidity providers, and...

The paper shows how-in a Merton-type model with bankruptcy-the currency composition of debt changes the risk profile of a company raising a given amount of financing, and thus affects the cost of debt. Foreign currency borrowing is cheaper when the exchange rate is positively correlated with the...