Publication: Bank Competition in the Middle East and Northern Africa Region
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Date
2010
ISSN
14753685
Published
2010
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This paper studies the extent of bank competition in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region during 1994-2008, using non-structural measures of competition such as the H-statistic and the Lerner index. Both these measures suggest that banking sector competition in MENA is lower relative to other regions and has not improved in recent years. An analysis of the determinants of competition across countries suggests that lower levels of competition in MENA are explained by a worse credit information environment and lower market contestability.
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Publication Bank Competition in the Middle East and Northern Africa Region(2010-07-01)This paper studies the extent of bank competition in the Middle East and Northern Africa region during 1994-2008, using non-structural measures of competition such as the H-statistic and the Lerner index. Both these measures suggest that banking sector competition in the region is lower relative to other regions and has not improved in recent years. An analysis of the determinants of competition across countries suggests that lower levels of competition in the Middle East and Northern Africa are explained by the region s worse credit information environment and lower market contestability.Publication Bank Financing for SMEs: Evidence across Countries and Bank Ownership Types(2011)Using data for 91 large banks from 45 countries, this paper finds that foreign, domestic private, and government-owned banks use different lending technologies and organizational structures for SME financing. The extent, type, and pricing of SME loans, however, is not strongly correlated with lending technologies and organizational structures, suggesting that SME financing need not be based only on "relationship lending". Consistent with these results, we find few significant differences in the extent, type, and pricing of SME loans across bank types. Instead, we find significant differences across developed and developing countries, driven by differences in the institutional and legal environment.Publication Bank Involvement with SMEs : Beyond Relationship Lending(2010)The "conventional wisdom" in academic and policy circles argues that, while large and foreign banks are generally not interested in serving SMEs, small and niche banks have an advantage because they can overcome SME opaqueness through relationship lending. This paper shows that there is a gap between this view and what banks actually do. Banks perceive SMEs as a core and strategic business and seem well-positioned to expand their links with SMEs. The intensification of bank involvement with SMEs in various emerging markets is neither led by small or niche banks nor highly dependent on relationship lending. Moreover, it has not been derailed by the 2007-2009 crisis. Rather, all types of banks are catering to SMEs and large, multiple-service banks have a comparative advantage in offering a wide range of products and services on a large scale, through the use of new technologies, business models, and risk management systems.Publication Bank Ownership Type and Banking Relationships(2008)We formulate and test hypotheses about the role of bank ownership type--foreign, state-owned, and private domestic banks--in banking relationships. Our application uses data from India, an important developing nation. The empirical results are consistent with all of our hypotheses with regard to foreign banks. First, these banks tend to establish relationships with relatively transparent firms. Second, firms that have relationships with foreign banks are more likely to enter into multiple banking relationships and to maintain a larger number of such relationships. Finally, firms banking with foreign banks are more likely than others to diversify relationships across bank ownership types. The data are also consistent with the hypotheses that firms with relationships with state-owned banks are relatively unlikely to maintain multiple banking relationships, tend to interact with a smaller number of banks, and less often diversify across ownership types.Publication Foreign Bank Participation and Outreach : Evidence from Mexico(2010)Recently, developing countries have witnessed a sharp increase in foreign bank participation. We examine the impact on banking outreach using newly gathered data for Mexico, where foreign bank participation rose from 2% to 83% of assets during 1997-2005. Country-, bank-, and bank-municipality-level estimations show a decline in the number of deposit and loan accounts. While country- and bank-level estimations indicate an increase in the share of municipalities with bank branches and in the likelihood of bank presence, bank-municipality regressions show that only rich and urban municipalities benefited. Overall, the evidence is consistent with a decline in outreach.
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