Structure and Development of Financial Institutions and Links with Trust: Cross-Country Evidence

We explore the links between trust and a broad range of financial structure and development measures. Our base sample is a cross section of 48 countries and the analysis covers the period 1980-1994. We use a new World Bank data set that provides the most comprehensive coverage of financial development and structure to this date. We find that trust is correlated with financial depth and efficiency as well as with stock market development. Results hold when using an instrumental variable approach, and they are robust to changes in specification when using a formal Sala-i-Martín sensitivity analysis

Bank Interest Rates in a Small European Economy: Some Exploratory Macro Level Analyses Using Finnish Data

This paper presents econometric analyses on the determination of bank deposit and lending rates using longitudinal Finnish data. Interest rate pass-through is very strong, possibly complete, in the case of lending rates; in the case of deposit rates the pass-through is far from complete, even in the long term.The monetary union has benefited customers by decreasing the average rate on new loans.Credit and interest rate risk premiums are clearly observable in banks' lending rates.The impact of money market rates on loan stock rates seems to have been non-linear; no obvious explanation for this phenomenon has been found