The emerging Europe has been hardest hit by the surge in the non-performing loans (NPLs) in the aftermath of the global financial turbulence and the crisis-induced recession. The surge in the NPLs generated a severe banking distress, and left a legacy of a debt overhang that dramatically...

New econometric evidence is provided to identify the determinants of the rapid credit growth in Bulgaria and evaluate whether the credit boom has increased bank fragility, based on a panel data analysis of 30 Bulgarian banks over the 1999-2006 period. Employing Fixed effects and GMM estimation...