The economy of Taipei,China was able to escape the contagion of the Asian financial crisis and remains well insulated from the type of external shocks that forced other economies in the region into currency devaluations and deep recession in 1997. Since that time however, internal pressures have...

Over the past decade, the health of the banking sector in Taipei,China has been in decline. Falling returns on assets and equity, steadily rising non-performing loans and bank runs at smaller financial institutions have highlighted problems across the banking sector as a whole. This study...

The Japanese “Big Bang” financial deregulation started in 1996. The objective was to make the Japanese banking sector more “free, fair and global”, spurring competition and resulting in a more profitable and efficient financial sector. The Big Bang brought about a massive consolidation...

The introduction of stricter capital adequacy regulation in Japan under the Basel Accord is often blamed for brining on a “capital crunch”: a reduction in bank lending in response to stricter regulations on bank capital. The capital positions of Japanese banks have been under pressure from...

This study investigates the hypothesis that stricter capital adequacy requirements introduced under the 1988 Basel Accord caused Japanese banks to restrict loan growth. Using a panel of Japanese bank balance sheets for fiscal years 1982-1999, this study finds that the 1988 Basel Accord...