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...

Explicit deposit insurance tends to be detrimental to bank stability - the more so where bank interest rates are deregulated and the institutional environment is weak.Based on evidence for 61 countries in 1980-97, Demirguc-Kunt and Detragiache find that explicit deposit insurance tends to be...

Vulnerability to crises in the banking sector appears to be associated with these factors: a weak macroeconomic environment characterized by slow GDP growth and high inflation, vulnerability to sudden capital outflows, low liquidity in the banking sector, a high share of credit to the private...

We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when foreign banks are better at monitoring high-end customers than domestic banks, their entry benefits those customers but may hurt other customers and worsen welfare....

Contemporary banking crises are not accompanied by declines in aggregate bank deposits, and credit does not fall relative to output, but the growth of both deposits and credit does slow down substantially. Output recovery begins the second year after the crisis and is not led by a resumption of...

The paper studies the effects of increased international financial integration when banks are fragile, with a focus on the welfare of bank depositors and of the business sector. A simple model of a small open economy with a fragile banking sector and imperfect capital mobility is developed....

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 the policies that, over the past decades, liberalized banking systems around the world have resulted in deeper credit markets. To measure banking sector reforms we use a new index that tracks policy changes in five separate areas for 91 countries over 1973-2005. We...

This paper studies whether compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCPs) improves bank soundness. The authors find a significant and positive relationship between bank soundness (measured with Moody's financial strength ratings) and compliance with principles...

We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when foreign banks are better at monitoring high-end customers than domestic banks, their entry benefits those customers but may hurt other customers and worsen welfare....