World Bank lending and financial sector development

Using a new database of World Bank loans to support financial sector development, the authors investigate whether countries that received such loans experienced more rapid growth on standard indicators of financial development than countries that did not. They account for self-selection with treatment effects regressions, and also use propensity score matching techniques. The authors'results indicate that borrowing countries had significantly more rapid growth in M2/GDP than non-borrowers, and swifter reductions in interest rate spreads and cash holdings (as a share of M2). Borrowers also had higher private credit growth rates than non-borrowers in treatment effects regressions, but not in standard panel regressions with fixed country effects. On the whole, however, the results indicate significant advantages for borrowers over non-borrowers in terms of financial development.

How deposit insurance affects financial depth : a cross-country analysis

Should we expect deposit insurance to have a positive effect on development of the financial sector? All insurance pools individual risks: premiums are paid into a fund from which losses are met. In most circumstances, a residual claimant to the fund (typically a private insurance company) loses money when losses exceed premiums. Claimants that underprice risk tend to go bankrupt. With most deposit insurance, however, the residual claimant is a government agency with very different incentives. If the premiums paid by member banks cannot cover current fund expenditures, the taxpayer makes up the shortfall. Facing little threat of insolvency, there is less incentive for administrative agencies to price risk accurately. In the United States, researchers have found that the combination of increasing competition in banking services and underpriced deposit insurance led to riskier banking portfolios without commensurate increases in bank capital. Deposit insurance may facilitate risk-taking, with negative consequences for the health of the financial system. On the positive side, insurance may give depositors increased confidence in the formal financial sector -- which may decrease the likelihood of bank runs and increase financial depth. Indeed, simple bivariate correlations between explicit insurance and financial depth are positive. But when one also controls for income and inflation, that relationship disappears -- in fact, the partial correlation between changes in subsequent financial depth and the adoption of explicit insurance is negative (and quite pronounced). Counterintuitive though it may be, that stylized fact may be partially explained by the political and economic factors that motivated the decision to establish an explicit scheme. The circumstances surrounding decisions about deposit insurance are associated with different movements in subsequent financial depth. Adopting explicit deposit insurance to counteract instability in the financial sector does not appear to solve the problem. The typical reaction to that type of decision has been negative, at least with regard to financial depth in the three years after the program's inception. Adopting explicit deposit insurance when government credibility and institutional development were high appears to have had a positive effect on financial depth.Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Financial Intermediation,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Insurance Law,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation

Job growth and finance : are some financial institutions better suited to early stages of development than others?

This paper combines firm-level data from 89 countries with updated country-level data on financial structure, and uses two estimation approaches. It finds that in low-income countries, labor growth is swifter in countries with a higher level of private credit/gross domestic product; the positive effect of bank credit is especially pronounced in industries that depend heavily on external finance; and banking development is positively associated with more physical and human capital investment. These findings are consistent with predictions from new structural economics. In high-income countries, labor growth rates are increasing in the level of stock market capitalization, which is also consistent with predictions from new structural economics, although the analysis is unable to provide evidence that the association is causal. It finds no evidence that small-scale firms in low-income countries benefit most from private credit market development. Rather, the labor growth rates of larger, capital-intensive firms increase more with the level of private credit market development, a finding consistent with the history-based political economy view that banking systems in low-income countries serve the interests of the elite, rather than providing broad-based access to financial services.Debt Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Emerging Markets

PURSUING EFFICIENCY WHILE MAINTAINING OUTREACH: BANK PRIVATIZATION IN TANZANIA

Profitability improvements after the privatization of a large state-owned bank might come at the expense of reduced access to financial services for some groups, especially the rural poor. The privatization of Tanzania's National Bank of Commerce provides a unique episode for studying this issue. The bank was split into the "new" National Bank of Commerce, a commercial bank that assumed most of the original bank's assets and liabilities, and the National Microfinance Bank, which assumed most of the branch network and the mandate to foster access to financial services. The new National Bank of Commerce's profitability and portfolio quality improved although credit growth was slow, in line with privatization experiences in other developing countries. Finding a buyer for the National Microfinance Bank proved very difficult, although after years under contract management by private banking consultants, Rabobank of the Netherlands emerged as a purchaser. Profitability has since improved and lending has slowly grown, while the share of non-performing loans remains low.access to banking; access to banking services; access to financial services; access to services; Accounting; Agricultural Bank; asset allocation; asset portfolio; ATMs

Measuring household usage of financial services : does it matter how or whom You Ask ?

In recent years, the number of surveys of access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries, or within the same country over time. This paper reports results from a randomized experiment in Ghana to test whether the identity of the respondent and the inclusion of product-specific cues in questions affect the reported rates of household usage of financial services. The analysis shows that rates of household usage are almost identical when the head reports on behalf of the household and when the rate is tabulated from a full enumeration of household use. Randomly selected informants (i.e., non-heads of the household) provide a less complete summary of household use of financial services than the other two methods. The findings also show that for credit from formal institutions, informal sources of savings, and insurance, usage rates are higher when questions are asked about specific financial products rather than about the respondent’s dealings with types of financial institutions. In short, who is asked the questions and the form in which they are asked both matter.Access to Finance,,Banks&Banking Reform,Housing&Human Habitats,Emerging Markets

Bank privatization in Argentina : a model of political constraints and differential outcomes

Based on results from country case studies, many researchers have claimed that political constraints affect bank privatization transactions, which in turn affect the post-privatization performance of the banking sector. But no study has either econometrically tested how political constraints affect bank privatization transactions or theretically modeled the privatization transaction. The authors present a simple theoretical framework that models the inherent tradeoffs faced by governments and potential buyers in privatization transactions involving banks. The potential buyer is concerned about the probability that the bank will remain solvent, about the profits it will earn after privatization, and about the price paid for the assets and liabilities. The government is concerned about the price received for the assets, about layoffs, and about service coverage after privatization. The evidence from bank privatization transactions in Argentina in the 1990s supports several of their theoretical predictions. In particular, provinces with highfiscal deficits were willing to accept layoffs and to guarantee a larger part of the privatized banks'portfolio in return for a higher price. The tequila crisis (Mexico's economic crisis in 1994-95) meant that politicians could protect fewer jobs and had to assume a greater share of their public banks'assets. Evidence of better performance at banks privatized after Mexico's crisis suggests that, by tying politicians'hands, the crisis may have brought unforeseen benefits. This conjecture awaits further empirical validation, but the authors hope that by explicitly incorporating the incentives politicians face, analysis can begin to address the question of why some privatizations succeed more than others.Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism

Microfinance tradeoffs : regulation, competition, and financing

This paper describes important trade-offs that microfinance practitioners, donors, and regulators navigate. Drawing evidence from large, global surveys of microfinance institutions, the authors find a basic tension between meeting social goals and maximizing financial performance. For example, non-profit microfinance institutions make far smaller loans on average and serve more women as a fraction of customers than do commercialized microfinance banks, but their costs per dollar lent are also much higher. Potential trade-offs therefore arise when selecting contracting mechanisms, level of commercialization, rigor of regulation, and the extent of competition. Meaningful interventions in microfinance will require making deliberate choices - and thus embracing and weighing tradeoffs carefully.Access to Finance,Debt Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Emerging Markets,Rural Finance

Financial performance and outreach : a global analysis of leading microbanks

Microfinance contracts have proven able to secure high rates of loan repayment in the face of limited liability and information asymmetries, but high repayment rates have not translated easily into profits for most microbanks. Profitability, though, is at the heart of the promise that microfinance can deliver poverty reduction while not relying on ongoing subsidy. The authors examine why this promise remains unmet for most institutions. Using a data set with unusually high quality financial information on 124 institutions in 49 countries, they explore the patterns of profitability, loan repayment, and cost reduction. The authors find that institutional design and orientation matter substantially. Lenders that do not use group-based methods to overcome incentive problems experience weaker portfolio quality and lower profit rates when interest rates are raised substantially. For these individual-based lenders, one key to achieving profitability is investing more heavily in staff costs-a finding consistent with the economics of information but contrary to the conventional wisdom that profitability is largely a function of minimizing cost.Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Investment and Investment Climate,Rural Finance

Formal finance and trade credit during China's transition

Using a large panel dataset of Chinese industrial firms, the authors examine the determinants of access to loans from formal financial intermediaries and extension of trade credit. Poorly performing state-owned enterprises were more likely to redistribute credit to firms with less privileged access to loans through trade credit, a pattern consistent with some of the extension of trade credit being involuntary. By contrast, profitable private domestic firms were more likely to extend trade credit than unprofitable ones. Trade credit likely provided a substitute for loans for these private firms'customers that were shut out of formal credit markets. As biases in lending became less severe, the amount of trade credit extended by private firms declined.Investment and Investment Climate,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Financial Intermediation

The political economy of privatization : an empirical analysis of bank privatization in Argentina

The authors study the political economy of bank privatization in Argentina. The results of their study strongly support the hypothesis that political incentives affect the likelihood of privatization. They find that: a) provinces whose governors belonged to the fiscally conservative Partido Justicialista were more likely to privatize; b) fiscal and economic crises increased the likelihood of privatization; and c) poorly performing banks were more likely to be privatized. They tested the hypotheses for a specific industry in a specific country, making it possible to control for enterprise performance and institutional characteristics. It seems reasonable to expect that similar results might hold in other industries and countries.Banks&Banking Reform,Decentralization,Municipal Financial Management,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Municipal Financial Management,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,National Governance,Housing Finance,Banks&Banking Reform