Economic relations with regions neighbouring the euro area in the ‘euro time zone

This paper reviews the economic, monetary and financial relations between the EU and the euro area and a set of countries in a broad set of neighbouring regions. The 80 or so countries are mostly classified as transition, emerging or developing economies and belong to four main regions: the Western Balkans; the European part of the Commonwealth of Independent States; the Middle East and Northern Africa; and Sub-Saharan Africa. In many respects, these countries are diverse; however, some common features can also be identified. One of these common features is the fact that the euro area is their largest trading partner and the largest originator of international bank credit, foreign direct investment and official development assistance; meanwhile, from a euro area perspective, while these countries account for a somewhat smaller share of external trade, they are important as providers of energy, other raw materials and agricultural products.

7. Banco de España management report for 2010

Capítulo de libr

Invariant Image-Based Currency Denomination Recognition Using Local Entropy and Range Filters

We perform image-based denomination recognition of the Pakistani currency notes. There are a total of seven different denominations in the current series of Pakistani notes. Apart from color and texture, these notes differ from one another mainly due to their aspect ratios. Our aim is to exploit this single feature to attain an image-based recognition that is invariant to the most common image variations found in currency notes images. Among others, the most notable image variations are caused by the difference in positions and in-plane orientations of the currency notes in images. While most of the proposed methods for currency denomination recognition only focus on attaining higher recognition rates, our aim is more complex, i.e., attaining a high recognition rate in the presence of image variations. Since, the aspect ratio of a currency note is invariant to such differences, an image-based recognition of currency notes based on aspect ratio is more likely to be translation- and rotation-invariant. Therefore, we adapt a two step procedure that first extracts a currency note from the homogeneous image background via local entropy and range filters. Then, the aspect ratio of the extracted currency note is calculated to determine its denomination. To validate our proposed method, we gathered a new dataset with the largest and most diverse collection of Pakistani currency notes, where each image contains either a single or multiple notes at arbitrary positions and orientations. We attain an overall average recognition rate of 99% which is very encouraging for our method, which relies on a single feature and is suited for real-time applications. Consequently, the method may be extended to other international and historical currencies, which makes it suitable for business and digital humanities application

Financial crises and financial reforms in Spain : what have we learned?.

Like the rest of the world, Spain has suffered frequent financial crises and undergone several changes in its regulatory framework. There have been crises that have been followed by reforms of the financial structure, and also troubled financial times with no modification of the regulatory and supervisory regime. In various instances, regulatory changes have predated financial crises, but in others banking crises have occurred without reference to changes in the regulatory regime. Regulation and supervision has been usually absent in the XIXth century, while in the XXth century policy makers have been more active and diligent. Moreover, all major financial crises have been followed by intense financial restructuring, although as elsewhere banking restructuring and interventions not always have been successful (in fact, the cases of failures and mixed results overcome the successful cases). The paper provides a short history of the major financial crises in Spain from 1856 to the present, and also reviews the main financial reforms and the distinctive regulatory regimes that have been in place in this last 150 years time span.Spanish banking; Financial crisis; Financial regulations; Banking reforms;

Financial market regulation in the wake of financial crises: the historical experience

The focus of the present volume - which originates from a workshop held at the Bank of Italy on 16 and 17 April 2009 - is the regulatory response given to financial crises in the past, across countries. Alongside the scholarly interest of such a review its aim is also to offer some insights that may be useful in re-designing regulation in the present time of distress. Financial crises have been examined under many perspectives, including that of regulatory failures. The studies assembled in this volume, which touch on a significant array of countries, can be viewed as part of a historical survey on this issue. The basic question is whether regulatory responses form a pattern, and more specifically, whether they tend to be biased with respect to an optimum, however defined. In the end, rather than finding one pattern of response, we were able to identify the "disturbances" which most often enter the post-crisis decisional process. The awareness of such factors, and some knowledge of their functioning, are instrumental in understanding (for academics) and in governing (for policy makers) the response to major financial crises.Financial crises, financial regulation, economic history

Essays on banking sector performance in the CISs

This thesis consists of essays on the financial performance of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ (CIS) banking systems. Chapter 2 presents a historical overview of the financial sectors development in transition countries and the CISs in particular. It shed light on key issues of the massive changes in the financial systems of the former soviet bloc countries and their influence on the countries’ banking system landscape nowadays. This chapter aims to contribute to the better understanding of the transition processes from momobank system to two-tier banking system in the CIS countries by providing theoretical background and empirical evidence of transition processes. After more than 20 years of transition the financial systems in the CIS countries have features to different extents, which are the legacy of the former system of finance. Nevertheless, overall the banks in the CISs were transferred into commercial banks and adopted the concept of conventional banking though to different degrees across countries. One of the most important transformations in the CIS banking sectors is the ownership of banks, which were fully state-owned during the soviet times; and privatisation and liberalisation completely reshaped the ownership structure in the CISs. Moreover, the changes in regulation and supervision have critically transformed banks’ risk-taking behaviour, which is also one of the major concerns of our study. Chapter 3 examines bank performance in terms of technical efficiency with particular attention to the impact of bank ownership and risk-taking behaviour and addressing environmental effects on banks technical efficiency in the CISs. Our findings provide empirical evidence that ownership structure matters for the CIS banks efficiency. Using state-owned banks as a benchmark we found that while private banks are less technically efficient than state-owned banks in the CIS countries as well as banks with foreign majority ownership, the CIS-owned banks are more efficient than other banks in the region. Risks-taking behaviour has different impact on performance in the CIS countries. This research has found positive association between capital, credit and market risk and performance, while negative association between liquidity risks and bank performance in the CISs. Chapter 4 examines cost and profit efficiency incorporating important variables, which are considered critical for differences in efficiency, as in Chapter 3. We include ownership type, risk-taking behaviour and different environmental factors to estimate reliable cost and profit efficiency measures. Different concepts of efficiency introduced in this study extend our analysis of bank efficiency, and offer a comprehensive study of the CIS banks performance. We found that privately owned banks are less cost efficient than state-owned banks. Although foreign banks are more profitable than state-owned banks, they are as cost efficient as state-owned banks. The CIS-owned foreign banks are less cost efficient than other banks in the CIS countries. There are different impacts of risk-taking behaviour on bank cost and profit efficiency in the CIS countries. Banks with lower capital risk are more cost efficient. Higher credit risk taking is associated with lower profitability of banks. While banks with lower liquidity risk are more profit efficient, they are less cost efficient. Higher market risk is associated with less cost efficiency. Finally, there is a convergence in cost and profit efficiency scores of banks across the CIS countries indicating a process of re-integration among CIS financial systems. Chapter 5 explores the impact of competition on the stability of banks in the CIS countries. We found that competition is good for stability and verified the competition-stability nexus for the CIS countries. This study also concluded that the improvement of legal rights of borrowers and lenders and bank supervision in the CISs would contribute to banking system stability. Our concluding policy recommendation is that policymakers need to design regulations that would ensure stability and market discipline without impeding competition and efficiency of banks in the CISs

Borrowing and socio-economic characteristics of households: results of sample surveys carried out by the Bank of Greece

This paper uses data from two household surveys conducted by the Bank of Greece in 2002 and 2005 and examines how various socio-economic characteristics of households, such as size, income and wealth, the age, education level and tenure of employment of the head, the number of members in employment and the degree of urbanisation of the place of residence are related to the probability of having a loan, the level of indebtedness, the distribution of the debt service cost to income ratio and also the non-servicing of loans. Most of the characteristics examined were found to be associated with the household’s probability of having a loan. The level of indebtedness was found to be positively correlated with household income and wealth and also associated with the age of the household head. Finally, certain household characteristics were also found to affect capacity to service debt obligations properly.household survey, household debt