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Abstract:
Substantial effort has been devoted to reforming China's banking system in recent years. The authorities recapitalized three large state-owned banks, introduced new governance structures, and brought in foreign strategic investors. However, it remains unclear the extent to which currently reported data reflect the true credit risk in loan portfolios and whether lending decisions have started to be taken on a commercial basis. We examine lending growth, credit pricing, and regional patterns in lending from 1997 through 2004 to look for evidence of changing behavior of the large state-owned commercial banks (SCBs). We find that the SCBs have slowed down credit expansion, but that the pricing of credit risk remains undifferentiated and banks do not appear to take enterprise profitability into account when making lending decisions. Controlling for several factors, we find that large SCBs have continued to lose market share to other financial institutions in provinces with more profitable enterprises. The full impact of the most recent reforms will become clear only in several years, however, and these issues should be revisited in future research.

China, banks, reforms, nonperforming loans

Abstract:
The recent wave of foreign investment in China's banks and the prospects of further opening of the banking sector under the WTO agreement suggest that foreign banks are likely to play an increasingly important role in China. This paper takes stock of the involvement of foreign banks in the Chinese banking sector in the perspective of international experience. While in most other countries foreign bank entry took the form of direct takeover or majority shareholding, foreign investments in China's banks have been minority shareholdings with very limited management involvement. The paper concludes that China appears to be well positioned to benefit from further opening of the banking sector to foreign investors. International experience suggests that greater competition from and participation of foreign banks can in general bring important benefits if appropriate incentives and sufficient opportunities are created.

Foreign investment, China, Banks, Bank reforms, World Trade Organization

Abstract:
Over the past two decades, there has been a clear trend toward integrating the regulation and supervision of banks, nonbank financial institutions, and securities markets. This paper reviews the international experience with integrated supervision. We survey the theoretical arguments for and against the integrated supervisory model, and use data on compliance with international standards to assess the validity of some of these arguments. We find that (i) full integration is associated with higher quality of supervision in insurance and securities and greater consistency of supervision across sectors, after controlling for the level of development; and (ii) fully integrated supervision is not associated with a significant reduction in supervisory staff.

financial sector, financial services regulation, prudential supervision, supervisory agencies, integrated supervision

Abstract:
We investigate the effects of market fragmentation and information flows in the case of stocks cross-listed on markets in Central Europe and London. First, we test for co-movement, interaction and error correction behavior between the local and London markets. Our results suggest that strong interactions exist between these markets, with the London market being slightly more important than the local one. The two prices of cross-listed stocks are cointegrated and pricing errors are corrected over a few days. These interactions suggest partial fragmentation. Second, we extend an earlier model to examine the impact of foreign listing on the variance of local returns. The focus of previous studies has concentrated almost exclusively on the return of cross-listed securities. The variance of returns has remained mostly unnoticed, even though some studies noted an increase of variance after the cross-listing. In our model, we introduce a new factor that influences return variance: tighter interaction with foreign markets as a consequence of cross-listing. Estimation results lend support to our model.

Cross-listing, information flow, order flow, return variance, market fragmentation

Abstract:
This paper contributes to the discussion on the efficiency of newly emerged financial markets in transition economies. We use data on one of the most developed financial markets in transition, the Czech Republic, to investigate financial market efficiency by examining the reaction to macroeconomic releases. Direct measure of market expectations, that is, survey data, is used to form a proxy for market expectations. The reactions of interest rates, bond yields, exchange rates, and the stock market index are explored. We found that, despite the fact that the survey data appear to reasonably approximate rational expectations, the Czech market lacks basic efficiency properties. It reacts to the expected part of the news announcement, and the adjustment is stretched over a period of several days. In the case of CPI, we found evidence suggesting that the efficiency of the market improves over time.

Abstract:
We analyze the structure, performance, and role of banking systems in the three member countries of the East African CommunityKenya, Tanzania, and Ugandaagainst the backdrop of recent financial sector reforms. Focusing on the behavior of different types of banks, we find no support for the argument that the presence of large international banks would have an adverse effect on the effectiveness and efficiency of banking sectors in developing countries. International banks are generally more efficient and more active in lending than domestic banks. However, as suggested by the Kenyan experience, the presence of international banks may not lead to increased competition and provision of banking services if weak institutions are allowed to remain in the system.

Banks, East Africa, financial sector reforms

Abstract:
Over the past two decades, there has been a clear trend in many countries toward integrating the prudential regulation and supervision of banks, nonbank financial institutions, and securities markets in a single national agency. This paper reviews the international experience with integrated supervisory agencies, using data on compliance with international standards to approximate quality of regulation and supervision. We find that integration is associated with higher quality of supervision in insurance and securities and greater consistency of supervision across sectors, after controlling for the level of development. Also, we find that whether supervision is located inside our outside the central bank does not have a significant relationship to the quality of supervision, other things being equal. Our results are robust with respect to different definitions of integration. In particular, they do not change qualitatively whether we compare fully integrated supervisory agencies with other supervisory frameworks, or whether we use an index distinguishing different degrees of supervisory integration.

financial services regulation, prudential supervision, supervisory agencies, integrated supervision

Abstract:
We explore the relationship between banking sector performance and the quality of regulation and supervision as measured by compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCP). Using BCP assessment results for 65 countries and 1998-2002 panel data for other variables, we find a significant positive impact of higher compliance with BCP on banking sector performance, as measured by nonperforming loans and net interest margin, after controlling for the level of development of the economy and the financial system and macroeconomic and structural factors.

Basel Core Principles, banking, nonperforming loans, interest margin

Abstract:
This paper explores insurance as a source of financial system vulnerability. It provides a brief overview of the insurance industry and reviews the risks it faces, as well as several recent failures of insurance companies that had systemic implications. Assimilation of banking-type activities by life insurers appears to be the key systemic vulnerability. Building on this experience and the experience gained under the FSAP, the paper proposes key indicators that should be compiled and used for surveillance of financial soundness of insurance companies and the insurance sector as a whole.

insurance, financial stability, soundness indicators

Abstract:
The announcement of the European Union enlargement coincided with a dramatic rise in stock prices in accession countries. This paper investigates the hypothesis that the rise in stock prices was a result of the repricing of systematic risk due to the integration of accession countries into the world market. We found that firm-level stock price changes are positively related to the difference between a firm's local and world market betas. This result is robust to controlling for changes in expected earnings, country effects, and other controls, although the magnitude of the effect is not very large. The differences between local and world betas explain nearly 22 percent of the stock price increase.

asset pricing, international financial integration, EU enlargement

Abstract:
The announcement of European Union enlargement coincided with a dramatic rise in stock prices in accession countries. This paper investigates the hypothesis that the rise in stock prices was a result of the repricing of systematic risk due to the integration of accession countries into the world market. We find that firm-level stock price changes are positively related to the difference between a firm's local and world market betas. This result is robust to controlling for changes in expected earnings, country effects and other controls, although the magnitude of the effect is not very large. The differences between local and world betas explain nearly 22% of the stock price increase.

Asset pricing, international financial integration, EU enlargement

Abstract:
In this paper, we develop multi-country indices of financial system stress and quality of financial policies and use them in regression analysis of the determinants of financial stress. We find that countries with higher quality of financial policies are better able to contain the effects of macroeconomic pressures on the overall level of stress in the financial system. They are also in a better position to ensure sustainable development of the financial system.

Financial crises, financial stress, financial policies

Abstract:
Many observers argue that informed and insider trading is widespread in the emerging financial markets of transition countries, yet rigorous treatment of this issue has been virtually non-existent. The current paper estimates the extent of informed trading on the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) using intra-day transaction data. Our estimates confirm that the average share of informed trading is equal to 0.32, which is high relative to developed markets and varies considerably among stocks. Using the Easley et al. (1996) approach on the very best segment of the PSE we obtained a high average probability of informed trading. Since data used in this study covers the period after the major attempts to improve market regulations, our results indicate that the PSE needs further strengthening to recover credibility and to become a real source of corporate financing.

Abstract:
The bid-ask spread affects significantly the performance of financial markets. We explore the impact of informed trading on the composition of the bid-ask spread in high frequency data from the Czech equity market, which has been plagued by informed trading due to insufficient regulation and missing institutions. Our estimates suggest that the Czech market-maker based trading system is rather efficient in dealing with informed trading. Only 17% of the bid-ask spread is explained by informed trading, which corresponds roughly to the share of the adverse-selection component in developed markets. An explanation based on the difference between the posted and traded spreads is offered.

Market microstructure, Bid-ask spread, Informed trading, Emerging markets

Abstract:
The link between informed trading and the bid-ask spread has been the focus of abundant literature and some authors feared that a large amount of informed trading might lead to shutdown of markets. We explore this issue using data from the Czech Republic. Our estimates confirm that the share of informed trading and its variability is indeed high relative to developed markets, however, share of the adverse selection component is only 14% of the spread. Since the Czech Republic has been known in the financial community as being plagued by informed trading, our findings suggest that the relative importance of adverse selection as a determinant of the spread is generally low across markets.

Market microstructure, informed trading, bid-ask spread, adverse selection