Robert Cull

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.

Who Gets Credit? The Behavior of Bureaucrats and State Banks in Allocating Credit to Chinese State-owned Enterprises

Using a sample of Chinese state-owned enterprises spanning 1980 to 1994, we investigate the factors that determine the sources of finance for firm-level fixed investment, including retained earnings, bank finance, and government transfers. Direct government transfers were not significantly associated with profitability throughout the period. In contrast, bank finance was positively linked to both profitability and some types of reform. Reforms that enabled managers to self-select, and thus expose themselves (and their employees) to greater risk, were positively associated with acquiring bank finance. The association between bank finance and profitability weakened in the 1990s as banks increasingly assumed bailout responsibility.

Bank Lending to Small Businesses in Latin America: Does Bank Origin Matter?

In recent years foreign bank participation has increased tremendously in Latin America. Some observers argue that foreign bank entry will benefit Latin American banking systems by reducing the volatility of loans and deposits and increasing efficiency. Others are concerned that foreign banks might choose to extend credit only to certain customers, leaving some sectors-such as small businesses-unserved. The authors examine this issue. Using bank-level data for Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru during the mid-1990s, they empirically investigate whether bank origin affects the share and growth rate of bank lending to small businesses. They find that although foreign banks generally lent less to small businesses (as share of total lending) than private domestic banks, the difference is due primarily to the behavior of small foreign banks. The difference was considerably smaller for large and medium-sized banks. And in Chile and Colombia, large foreign banks might actually lend slightly more (as share of total lending) than large domestic banks.

Does Foreign Bank Penetration Reduce Access to Credit in Developing Countries? Evidence from Asking Borrowers

Existing evidence on the effect of foreign bank penetration on lending to small and medium-size enterprises is ambiguous. Case studies of developing countries show that foreign banks lend less to such firms than domestic banks do. But cross-country studies find that foreign bank entry fosters competition and reduces interest rates, benefits that should extend to all firms. The authors use data from a large cross-country survey of enterprises to investigate this issue. Their results suggest that foreign bank penetration improves financing conditions (both the quantities of financing and the terms) for enterprises of all sizes, although it seems to benefit larger firms more.

Mutually Destructive Bidding: The FCC Auction Design Problem

In general, synergies across license valuations complicate the auction design process. Theory suggests that a “simple” (i.e., non-combinatorial) auction will have difficulty in assigning licenses efficiently in such an environment. This difficulty increases with increases in “fitting complexity.” In some environments, bidding may become “mutually destructive.” Experiments indicate that a properly designed combinatorial auction is superior to a simple auction in terms of economic efficiency and revenue generation in bidding environments with a low amount of fitting complexity. Concerns that a combinatorial auction will cause a “threshold” problem are not borne out when bidders for small packages can communicate.

Deposit insurance and financial development

The authors examine the effect of different design features of deposit insurance, on long-run financial development, defined to include the level of financial activity, the stability of the banking sector, and the quality of resource allocation. Their empirical analysis is guided by recent theories of banking regulation, that employ an agency framework. The authors examine the effect of deposit insurance on the size, and volatility of the financial sector, in a sample of fifty eight countries. They find that generous deposit insurance, leads to financial instability in lax regulatory environments. But in sound regulatory environments, deposit insurance does have the desired impact on financial development, and growth. Thus, countries introducing a deposit insurance scheme, need to ensure that it is accompanied by a sound regulatory framework. Otherwise, the scheme will likely lead to instability, and deter financial development. In weak regulatory environments, policymakers should at least limit deposit insurance coverage.

Political and Economic Determinants of the Likelihood of Privatizing Argentine Public Banks

This paper discusses the political economy of bank privatization in Argentina following institutional changes related to the implementation of the Convertibility Plan and to the Tequila Crisis. The empirical results strongly support the hypothesis that political incentives affect the likelihood of privatization. We find (1) poorly performing banks were more likely to be privatized; (2) overstaffing tended to reduce the probability of privatization; (3) large banks were less likely to be privatized; and (4) higher levels of provincial unemployment and higher shares of public employees reduced the probability of privatization. Although the hypotheses were tested for a specific industry in a specific country, which makes it possible to control for enterprise performance and institutional characteristics, it seems reasonable that similar results might hold in other industries and countries.

Why Privatize? The Case of Argentina's Public Provincial Banks

Argentina has been a leader among developing countries in restructuring its banking sector. The authors analyze the performance of those banks before and after privatization and estimate fiscal savings associated with privatizing Argentinas banks rather than keeping them public and later recapitalizing them. The authors describe the process of privatization, including the creation of residual entities for the assets and liabilities of public provincial banks that private buyers found unattractive and the creation of a special fund (the Fondo Fiduciario) to convert the short-term liabilities of the residual entities into longer-term obligations. They argue that the Fondo, created through cooperation between the Argentine federal government and the World Bank, was key in making privatization of the banks politically feasible. Argentina privatized roughly half of its public provincial banks. The Argentine experience suggests that bank privatization may succeed only when accompanied by a sound, incentive-compatible system of prudential regulation. The regulatory environment affects a bank s solvency. Improved regulation and supervision alone does not deliver the same benefits as improved regulation and supervision with privatization. The provincial banks that remained in the public sector did not demonstrate the same performance gains as privatized provincial banks. The decision to maintain a public provincial bank is a costly one. Policymakers should expect privatization to pass through some or all of the following steps: 1) With respect to pre-privatization audits, expect losses hidden in these banks to be larger than those indicated in prior audits. 2) If residual entities are created, expect them to hold a large share of the old public provincial bank, if the quality of its loan portfolio was low. 3) Do not expect the price paid for the privatized entity (the so-called good bank) to be great, at least compared with assets and liabilities in the residual entity. 4) If the residual entity is large, the province will be confronted with substantial short-term liabilities. But with assistance and an aggressive asset recovery strategy, governments should be able to navigate their way through short-term difficulty. 5) The costs of privatization are less than the costs of future recapitalization, even if the near-term management of the residual entity does not go well.

Foreign Bank Participation in Developing Countries: What Do We Know About the Drivers and Consequences of this Phenomenon?

Foreign bank participation has increased steadily across developing countries since the mid-1990s. This paper documents this trend and surveys the existing literature to explore the drivers and consequences of this phenomenon, paying particular attention to the differences observed across regions both in the degree of foreign bank participation and in the impact of this process. Local profit opportunities, the absence of barriers to entry, and the presence of mechanisms to mitigate information problems have been the main factors driving foreign bank entry across developing countries. In general, foreign bank participation has been shown to exert a positive influence on banking sector efficiency and competition. The weight of the evidence suggests that foreign bank presence does not endanger, but rather enhances banking sector stability. And although some case studies suggest that foreign bank entry limits access to finance, many cross-country studies offer evidence to the contrary.

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.