| Abstract: | Whether FinTech causes the fragility of financial institutions is a controversial issue. Using a panel sample of listed banks from 84 countries, we exploit the introduction of FinTech regulatory sandboxes as an exogenous shock and examine the heterogeneous effect of FinTech on the fragility of financial institutions. We find that (i) a shock to FinTech innovations has no net effect on the fragility of financial institutions when we ignore market characteristics, (ii) promoting FinTech decreases (increases) the fragility of financial institutions in emerging (developed) financial markets, and (iii) FinTech affects the fragility of financial institutions through the channel of profitability. |
