Regulatory Impact Assessment and the Economic Transition to Markets

In most developing and transition economies, far-reaching legal and regulatory reforms are essential for a successful transition to market-led economic development. One of the most important capacities of a market regulator is the ability to assess the market impacts of a regulation before it is adopted. Regulatory impact analysis (RIA) is a tool now used in most developed countries to improve understanding of the economic and social welfare impacts of a law and other forms of regulation. This article argues that institutional reforms aimed at good governance are at the core of the development process, that RIA can contribute to the quality of legal reforms and support other good governance goals, and that RIA can be implemented step-by-step by building on existing practices and investing in skills and training.     

Regulatory Impact Assessment and the Economic Transition to Markets

In most developing and transition economies, far-reaching legal and regulatory reforms are essential for a successful transition to market-led economic development. One of the most important capacities of a market regulator is the ability to assess the market impacts of a regulation before it is adopted. Regulatory impact analysis (RIA) is a tool now used in most developed countries to improve understanding of the economic and social welfare impacts of a law and other forms of regulation. This article argues that institutional reforms aimed at good governance are at the core of the development process, that RIA can contribute to the quality of legal reforms and support other good governance goals, and that RIA can be implemented step-by-step by building on existing practices and investing in skills and training.     

Institutional development and bank stability: Evidence from transition countries

This paper takes advantage of the dynamic nature of institutional reforms in transition economies and explores the causal effects of those reforms on bank risk. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that banks’ financial stability increases substantially after these countries reform their legal institutions, liberalize banking, and restructure corporate governance. We also find that the effects of legal and governance reforms on bank risk may critically depend on the progress of banking reforms. A further examination of alternative risk measures reveals that the increases in financial stability among banks mainly come from the reduction of asset risk. Banks tend to have lower ROA volatility and fewer nonperforming loans after reforming the institutional environment. Finally, we split our sample into foreign and domestic banks and find that the enhancement of financial stability is more pronounced for domestic banks.     

金融中介发展、企业家精神与区域经济增长——基于省级面板数据的实证研究

本文利用1999--2010年我国30个省市的面板数据,对金融中介、企业家精神和区域经济增长之间的关系进行了实证研究。实证结果显示：金融中介发展尤其是效率的提高,对经济增长有直接的推动作用,但其增长效应存在地区差异;企业家精神能够促进经济增长,但企业家创新精神的经济增长效应远低于创业精神的经济增长效应;金融中介发展主要通过支持企业家创业活动促进经济增长。     

Privatization,financial development,property rights and growth

This study analyzes how prevailing institutional arrangements i.e., property rights, contracting rights, political institutions, and corporate governance practices affect privatized firms’ performance, capital markets development, and economic growth. Most of the studies surveyed show that privatization enhances privatized firms performance, efficiency, and profitability, which percolates to economic growth. Privatized firms performed better in countries with better regulatory and legal frameworks. Partial privatization may be beneficial in countries with weak institutions, namely, the French civil law countries. The stronger the economic and the governing institutions, the easier it is for privatized firms to thrive and contribute to economic growth. Overall, privatization allows firms to achieve improved efficiency while driving the development of the financial sector.     

Economic Globalization and Financial Development in East Asia: A Panel Cointegration and Causality Analysis

This study examines the role of economic globalization in financial development in eight East Asian economies. The heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals that cointegration is present among economic globalization, institutions, financial development, real gross domestic product per capita, and financial reforms. The Granger causality test results indicate that economic globalization has a significant causal influence on institutional quality, and institutional reforms have in turn facilitated and supported financial development, in particular of the banking sector in East Asia. Economic globalization is also found to have a favorable causal impact on stock market development without going through the institutional quality channel.     

Capital account liberalization, financial development and industry growth: A synthetic view

This paper synthesizes studies analyzing the effects of capital account liberalization on industry growth while controlling for financial crises, domestic financial development and the strength of institutions. We find evidence that financial openness has positive effects on the growth of financially dependent industries, although these growth-enhancing effects evaporate during financial crises. Further analysis indicates that the positive effects of capital account liberalization are limited to countries with relatively well-developed financial systems, good accounting standards, strong creditor rights and rule of law. It suggests that countries must reach a certain threshold in terms of institutional and economic development before they can expect to benefit from capital account liberalization.     

Financial sector foreign aid and financial intermediation

The effectiveness of foreign aid is typically measured by the effect of aid on economic growth. Prior literature provides ambiguous results on this effect partly due to the aggregation of aid to different sectors and the small amount of foreign aid relative to the economy in most countries. Because growth in financial intermediation and financial markets has been shown to play a key role in spurring economic growth, in this paper we focus on aid to the financial sector and seek to identify the causal effects of foreign aid to the financial sector on financial intermediation. Using fixed effects OLS and system GMM methods for a panel of countries from 1993 to 2016, we find that foreign aid to the financial sector primarily increases claims on the government sector, and has negative or neutral effect on claims to the private sector and no effect on liquid liabilities of the banking sector and interest rate spread between borrowing and lending rates. This effect persists even after controlling for country institutional characteristics, such as trade openness and rule of law. Thus, foreign aid increases public sector borrowing but does not appear to have any benefits for financial intermediation in the private sector. We verify that the relation is not spurious by using aid to the health sector for falsification tests.     

Markets and institutions in financial intermediation: National characteristics as determinants

Given the importance of financial intermediation and the rise of globalization, there is little prior research on how national preferences for financial intermediation (markets versus institutions) are determined by cultural, legal, and other national characteristics. Using panel analysis for data on a recent 8-year period for 30 countries, this paper documents that national preferences for market financing increase with political stability, societal openness, economic inequality, and equity market concentration, and decreases with regulatory quality and ambiguity aversion. We confirm with robustness tests that our result for regulatory quality is independent of differences in national wealth and that our result for political stability is independent of both wealth and political legitimacy. These results should be of much interest to managers, scholars, regulators, and policy makers.     

金融发展对经济增长的促进作用及其持续性研究——基于英美、德国、法国法系的比较视角

本研究按英美法系、德国法系和法国法系国家群分类,考察了各法系特征及其影响机制下,金融发展对经济增长的促进作用及持续性效果的差异,属于“法金融”范畴。本文首先阐述了主要法系的核心理念,提出法系影响金融发展与经济增长关系的社会和适应两个机制,并对其影响机理进行分析。在此基础上采用动态面板GMM方法,对包括英美、德国和法国3个法系共计98个经济体的面板数据,实证检验了不同法系下金融发展对经济增长的促进作用及持续性的差异。本研究得出以下结论:法系的核心理念和特征会通过社会机制和适应机制,影响一国金融发展对经济增长的促进作用;分法系看,德国法系下金融发展对经济增长促进作用的持续性最强,英美法系居中,法国法系最弱。本研究对中国金融发展模式改革以及如何有效促进经济增长提出了政策建议。     

Financial development,financial structure,and domestic investment: International evidence

Does it matter for domestic investment whether a country's financial system is bank-based or stock-market based? This paper posits that financial intermediation affects domestic investment notably by alleviating financing constraints, allowing firms to increase investment in response to increased demand for output. The key result is that the structure of the financial system has no independent effect on investment, in the sense that it does not enhance the response of investment to changes in output, while financial development makes investment more responsive to output growth. Consequently, rather than promoting a particular type of financial structure, countries should implement policies that reduce transactions costs in financial intermediation and enforce creditor and investor rights. This will facilitate the development of banks and stock markets, which will stimulate domestic investment.     

Interest rate spreads and banking system efficiency: General considerations with an application to the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe

Low spreads between loan rates and deposit rates are indicative of a more efficient financial system. We argue that spreads are better cross country measures of banking system efficiency than the net interest margins used in previous studies. We present theoretical and empirical evidence that the spread may be a particularly good measure of efficiency, both for the transition economies and other countries. The spread is a financial intermediation measure and is highly negatively correlated with conventional measures of intermediation. Consistent with theory, the spread is negatively related to economic growth. We also find that the spread has determinants similar to other FI measures. International agencies should report spreads and put more emphasis on this measure of efficiency.     

金融中介发展与经济增长研究述评

根据熊彼特的经济发展理论,金融中介发展通过发现并支持企业家的创新而有利于长期经济增长.理论研究方面,已有文献主要从金融市场信息甄别成本降低、缓解消费信贷约束、分散创新风险等方面对金融发展促进经济增长的渠道展开论证.实证研究方面,这个领域早期的经验研究大多基于发达国家的截面数据,一般发现金融中介发展与经济增长正相关;上世纪90年代以来的研究则开始注重利用面板数据技术,控制估计方程中不可观测的异质性、度量误差、共时联立等内生性问题,已经发现一些支持金融中介发展有利于经济增长的经验证据,但在有关具体传导机制的识别上存在分歧.     

Legal Traditions and Initial Endowments in Shaping the Path of Financial Development

This paper finds remarkable heterogeneity in the relationship between legal traditions and finance in former colonies. The effect of the British common law on financial development is conditioned by the level of initial endowments. In former colonies with low precolonial population density, the common law has promoted high financial development, but where endowments were abundant, this legal tradition has not worked well. In contrast, the effect of the French civil law on finance is invariant to endowments. British common law countries do not exhibit greater financial development levels than French civil law countries when endowments are sufficiently high.     

Financial System Size in Transition Economies: The Effect of Legal Origin

Gorton and Winton (1998) link the size of the banking system in transition economies to financial stability. We provide empirical evidence consistent with their notion that the size of the financial system will be smaller in these countries. This effect holds even after controlling for the effect of rule of law and/or legal origin, and other relevant variables. Transition economy status, thus adds additional explanatory power to traditional law and finance explanations of financial development. Classification of transition economies by legal origin reveals that Russian legal origin has a strong negative effect on financial development. Regression analysis shows claims on the private sector/gross domestic product (GDP) to be 46 to 60 percentage points lower in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and 23 to 39 percentage points lower in non-Soviet transition economies compared to countries of English legal origin. There is a positive relation between claims on the private sector and the rule of law for a broad cross section of countries.     

The Skill Profile of Central Bankers and Supervisors

Using a new database covering some 91 supervisory agencies, this paper examines how important various skilled experts are in the supervisory process and the relative usage of different kinds of such experts. We seek to explore what kind of perspective supervisors in different institutional settings may adopt: a macro-oriented perspective or a more micro-approach? The answer to this question is relevant, as there is evidence that many financial crises have been macro-induced.It is found that central banks employ more economists and fewer lawyers in their supervisory/financial stability wing than non-centralbank supervisory agencies. This result would indicate that an institutional setting with direct or indirect central bank involvement is more likely to produce a macro-approach. Next, there are significant economies of scale in financial supervision, though this can be measured by several alternative variables (e.g., the relative scale of bank intermediation). Finally, there do not appear to be major economies of scope. A more complex financial system with a well-developed stock market would need both more supervisors as well as more skilled ones.     

Board diversity reforms: Do they matter for EU bank performance?

We examine the impact of governance reforms related to board diversity on the performance of European Union banks. Using a difference‐in‐difference approach, we document that reforms increase bank stock returns and their volatility within the first 3 years after their enactment. The type of reform matters, with quotas increasing return volatility. The effectiveness of reforms depends on a country's institutional environment. The impact of reforms on return volatility is found to be beneficial in countries more open to diversity, with common law system and with greater economic freedom. Finally, reforms play a bigger role in banks that have ex ante less heterogeneous boards.     

Stock markets, banks, and economic growth: Empirical evidence from the MENA region

Over the last four decades, a wide theoretical debate is concerned with the fundamental relationship between financial development and economic growth. Recent studies shed some light on the simultaneous effect of banks and financial system development on growth rather than a separate impact. The empirical study is conducted using an unbalanced panel data from 11 MENA region countries. Econometric issues will be based on estimation of a dynamic panel model with GMM estimators. Thus, peculiarities of MENA region countries will be detected. The empirical results reinforce the idea of no significant relationship between banking and stock market development, and growth. The association between bank development and economic growth is even negative after controlling for stock market development. This lack of relationship must be linked to underdeveloped financial systems in the MENA region that hamper economic growth. Then, more needs to be done to reinforce the institutional environment and improve the functioning of the banking sector in the MENA region. Based on these results, other regions at the same stage of financial development such as Africa, Eastern Europe or Latin America should improve the functioning of their financial system in order to prevent their economies from the negative impact of a shaky financial market.     

Cross-listing and legal bonding: Evidence from mergers and acquisitions

Using a sample of foreign acquisitions of US targets, this study examines the extent to which cross-listing in the US leads to legal and regulatory bonding, and/or whether reputational bonding proxied by financial intermediaries monitoring, an often ignored component of the bonding mechanism, is an important factor in US investors decision to hold shares in cross-listed firms. We find that compared to US firms, cross-listed firms are less likely to use equity in takeovers of US targets. Further, cross-listed firms from countries with poorer legal protections are less likely to finance with equity and pay higher premiums than cross-listed firms from countries with better legal protections. Using analysts’ coverage and institutional following as proxies for financial intermediary monitoring, we find some support for the importance of reputational bonding. The evidence suggests that while cross-listing reduces barriers to investment, there are limits to its ability to completely subsume both the legal environment and the importance of the monitoring of financial intermediaries. This further suggests that the extent of actual legal and regulatory bonding by cross-listed firms may be more limited than often assumed.     

金融中介发展、企业家精神与区域经济增长——基于省级面板数据的实证研究

金融中介和企业是经济增长的动力,而企业家精神则是推动企业成长的灵魂.本文利用1999～2010年中国30个省市面板数据,对三者之间的关系进行了实证研究.实证结果显示：金融中介发展尤其是效率的提高,对经济增长有直接的推动作用,但其增长效应存在地区差异;企业家精神能够促进经济增长,但企业家创新精神的经济增长效应远低于创业精神的经济增长效应;金融中介发展主要通过支持企业家创业活动促进经济增长.