Financial intermediation in the pre-consolidated banking sector in Nigeria

This paper uses unique bank-by-bank balance sheet and income statement information to investigate the intermediation efficiency in the Nigerian pre-consolidated banking sector during 2000-05. The author analyzes whether the Central Bank of Nigeria's policy of recent banking consolidation can be justified and rationalized by looking at the determinants of spreads. A spread decomposition and panel estimations show that the reform of the banking sector could be the first step to raise the intermediation efficiency of the Nigerian banking sector. The author finds that larger banks have enjoyed lower overhead costs, increased concentration in the banking sector has not been detrimental to the spreads, both increased holdings of liquidity and capital might have led to lower spreads in 2005, and a stable macroeconomic environment is conducive to a more efficient channeling of savings to productive investments.Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Investment and Investment Climate

Monetary policy, structural break, and the monetary transmission mechanism in Thailand

The paper studies monetary policy and the monetary transmission mechanism in Thailand in light of the Asian crisis in 1997. Existing studies that adopt structural vector auto-regression (VAR) approaches do not give a clear and agreed-upon view how monetary shocks are transmitted to the Thai economy that is subject to structural breaks. This study explicitly models a pre-crisis and post-crisis cointegrated VAR model. This analysis supports arguments that the trinity of open capital markets, pegged exchange rate regime, and monetary policy autonomy is inconsistent in the pre-crisis period. In contrast, the model points to an effective monetary policy in the post-crisis period. Further, the author analyzes the common driving trends of the model.Economic Stabilization,Economic Theory&Research,Macroeconomic Management,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Financial Economics

Bank efficiency, ownership, and market structure : why are interest spreads so high in Uganda ?

Using a unique bank-level data set on the Ugandan banking system during 1999-2005, the authors explore the factors behind consistently high interest rate spreads and margins. While foreign banks charge lower interest rate spreads, they do not find a robust and economically significant relationship between privatization, foreign bank entry, market structure, and banking efficiency. Similarly, macroeconomic variables can explain little of the over-time variation in bank spreads. Bank-level characteristics, on the other hand, such as bank size, operating costs, and composition of loan portfolio explain a large proportion of cross-bank, cross-time variation in spreads and margins. However, time-invariant bank-level fixed effects explain the largest part of bank variation in spreads and margins. Further, the authors find tentative evidence that banks targeting the low end of the market incur higher costs and therefore higher margins.Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Investment and Investment Climate,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Financial Intermediation

Financial Spillovers to Emerging Markets during the Global Financial Crisis

Using data from the recent crisis, the authors analyze financial linkages between market liquidity and bank solvency measures in advanced economies and emerging market bond and stock markets. A multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model is estimated to gauge the extent of co-movements of these financial variables across markets. The findings indicate that the notion of possible decoupling of financial markets had been misplaced. In fact, interlinkages between funding stress and equity markets in advanced economies and emerging market financial indicators were highly correlated, and have seen sharp increases during specific crisis moments.emerging markets, subprime crisis, liquidity, solvency, GARCHemerging markets, subprime crisis, liquidity, solvency, GARCH

Monetary Policy, Structural Break, and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism in Thailand

The paper studies monetary policy and the monetary transmission mechanism in Thailand in light of the Asian crisis in 1997. Existing studies that adopt structural vector auto-regression (VAR) approaches do not give a clear and agreed-upon view how monetary shocks are transmitted to the Thai economy that is subject to structural breaks. This study explicitly models a pre-crisis and post-crisis cointegrated VAR model. This analysis supports arguments that the trinity of open capital markets, pegged exchange rate regime, and monetary policy autonomy is inconsistent in the pre-crisis period. In contrast, the model points to an effective monetary policy in the post-crisis period. Further, the author analyzes the common driving trends of the model

Essays on banking and monetary policy

This thesis examines issues of ifinancial intermediation in Uganda and Nigeria, banking stability across OECD countries and the monetary transmission mechanism in Thailand. A panel model is constructed to investigate the determinants of Ugandan bank interest rate margins and spreads especially which bank-specific, banking industry-specific and macroeconomic factors are responsible for the persistently high margins-and spreads in Uganda in the past years. Overall our findings point towards the strong role of bank-specific characteristics and structural impediments in explaining margins and spreads. We do not find a robust and economically significant relationship between privatization. foreign bank entry, market structure and banking efficiency.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo