Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a statistical examination of the factors affecting the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) operating in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Design/methodology/approach – Data on MFIs operating in Eastern Europe and Central Asia...

Microfinance institutions are important, particularly in developing countries, because they expand the frontier of financial intermediation by providing loans to those traditionally excluded from formal financial markets. This paper presents the first systematic statistical examination of the...

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the roles of economic and political factors in explaining the foreign ownership share of a country's banking assets. In particular, our study includes new market-openness and regulation variables. The General Agreement on Trade in Services is an...

This study extends previous research by comparing banks across European Union (EU) accession and non-accession countries of central-eastern Europe in order to detect differences that perhaps have implications related to policy prescriptions for joining the EU. Using commercial banking data from...

Does a politician with power in the U.S. Congress positively affect the value of firms headquartered in their home state? We investigate this question by examining the profitability and stock performance of commercial banks. Banks can be enormously influenced by the political and regulatory...

In spite of increasing pressure on microfinance institutions (MFIs) operating in developing countries to transform into regulated financial intermediaries, to date, no study has investigated whether regulated MFIs actually achieve better financial results and reach more poor clients than...