This paper assembles a bank-level dataset covering the operations of 38 international banks from eight industrial countries and their subsidiaries overseas during 1995-2004, and studies the extent of diversification gains from their local operations abroad. The paper finds that international...

Recent banking crises in Argentina, Paraguay, and Venezuela suggest that the macroeconomic impact is influenced by the causes of the crisis, the exchange rate regime, the degree of dollarization, and the structure of the banking system. Crises stemming from both macroeconomic and bank-specific...

The experiences of seven countries that have undergone banking crises show that crises have significant implications for the short-run stability of the demand for money, the money multiplier, the transmission mechanism, and the signal variables of monetary policy. Monetary and credit...

This note examines interest rate linkages within the EMS. Cointegration tests suggest the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between German and other EMS interest rates. Bivariate VAR analysis finds that Granger-causality either stems from German to other European interest rates...

This paper investigates, using cointegration and Granger-causality techniques, whether a stable long-run co-movement exists between world commodity prices and U.K. retail prices, and whether short-run changes in commodity prices convey information about future movements in U.K. retail prices....

This paper analyzes empirically what explains the low profitability of Chinese banks for the period 1997-2004. We find that better capitalized banks tend to be more profitable. The same is true for banks with a relatively larger share of deposits and for more X-efficient banks. In addition, a...

This paper shows empirically that China s trade balance is sensitive to fluctuations in the renminbi real effective exchange rate. However, the current size of the trade surplus is such that exchange rate policy, alone, will probably not be able to address the imbalance. The reduction in the...

This paper seeks to understand why Asian foreign investment is concentrated in financial markets outside of the region instead of in Asian markets. We analyze empirically the geographical composition of the cross-border portfolio holdings of more than 40 source countries. We compare these...

In this paper we explore empirically a long-standing question in the literature on finance for growth. namely whether the financial structure -in terms of the size of the banking system relative to the capital markets- matters for economic growth. We build upon the existing literature by...