Mongolian microfinance: Some first insights from a randomised field experiment
In Mongolia, as in numerous other countries, microfinance has attracted attention as a potentially powerful tool to generate pro-poor growth. Many Mongolians live in poverty and income disparities between urban and rural areas are significant. The rural economy remains vulnerable to variations in weather conditions; droughts and harsh winters often lead to large-scale livestock deaths, also this year. As a result, there is wide-spread migration from the countryside to urban…
Kazakhstan’s Missing Middle
By Ralph De Haas and Asel Isakova
Why do private equity funds have difficulties with finding interesting mid-sized investment opportunities in Kazakhstan? And why does economic diversification remain such an elusive policy goal for the Kazakh government?
These are complex questions to which the table below may provide a partial answer. It shows the contribution of small firms (less than 50 employees), medium-sized firms (50-250 employees), and large firms (>250 employees)…
EBRD launches Transition Report 2009
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Stress testing of banks and policy implications
Recent stress tests, while admittedly not perfect, have proven useful to bring a degree of clarity over banks’ portfolio quality. When backed by credible financing plans, the tests have helped confidence in battered banking sectors. In Europe two major regional exercises are under way: a CEBS-coordinated and nationally-implemented testing of the largest EU-based bank groups, and a regional exercise by the IMF, both with expected results around September.
Peer pressure, positive…
A look at non-performing loans: the boomerang effect
Authors: Ralph De Haas and Stephan Knobloch , 16 July 2009.
When the global financial crisis hit the transition region, worries among policy makers centred on the local banking systems and the potential for financial contagion from west to east. And when unemployment started to rise and output declined sharply as of Q4 2008, the attention shifted towards the real-economic impact of the crisis.
Now, notwithstanding more frequent discussions about green shoots…
The “invisible hand” of advanced country central banks in emerging markets
We all know that most emerging market economies have limited policy room to deliver massive counter-cyclical crisis response. This affects their risk perception, investor confidence, and capital inflows. Indeed, most emerging markets have limited fiscal space (except for those with a war chest of international reserves such as China and several other Asian countries, or Chile in Latin America). Untraditional monetary policy/quantitative easing is constrained by concerns over the possible
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In defense of foreign banks
‘Banker’ has recently become somewhat of a dirty word and ‘foreign banker’ a most reviled sub-species. Over the last months foreign banks have, amongst other things, been accused of abandoning some of the emerging markets that have contributed so much to their profitability over the last decade. When the going gets tough, so the story goes, foreign banks quickly cut back their lending abroad and refocus on domestic clients. Indeed,
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BIS data on cross-border flows – a closer look
Authors: Piroska Nagy (-7149) and Stephan Knobloch (-7065), 5 May 2009.
New BIS data for the last quarter of 2008 show that BIS-reporting banks significantly reduced their asset holdings across major regions of the world. While in absolute terms most of the reduction took place in advanced countries, in relative terms, emerging markets were hit harder. Our region has thus far been least affected. Furthermore, the decline has been concentrated…
The crisis has changed the EBRD
The debates among the G20 leaders about global architecture and the crisis response of the international institutions may seem abstract and removed from the concerns of most people. But the discussions are very real to those of us working in these institutions as we prepare to meet our key stakeholders at our Annual Meetings on May 15-16 in London.
The crisis has changed the way we operate. Today’s EBRD…
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