Survey_Beck_2000

Abstract

In order to ensure proper econometric regressions which do not suffer from a small sample bias, a large number of observations is clearly desirable. Therefore, no a priori selection of countries has been done. The sample size is determined only by data availability. All emerging markets for which data on foreign bank penetration, the financial services trade regime, the indices of economic freedom and the rule of law are available have been included in the sample. For a total of 56 countries, data on foreign bank penetration and the macroeconomic and regulatory variables are available. Since not all countries have signed the GATS agreement on financial services, the total number of countries which have data on the financial services trade regime is only 36.12 A list of these two groups of countries can be found in Appendix A.3. Note that group 2 is almost a prefect subset of group 1. Table 2 and 3 show some descriptive statistics for the two groups of countries. The variable names are assigned as follows: Level: Time average (1990-98) of total net capital flows in mill. of dollars, Share: Time average (1990-98) of total net capital flows as a share in GDP, CV: Absolute value of the coefficient of variation of total net capital flows, Fora: Average share of foreign banks (assets) (1990-97), in percent, Forn: Average share of foreign banks (number) (1990-97), in percent, Bias1: Bias towards cross-border supply, index, Bias2: Bias towards bank lending, index, Restrict: Restrictions on foreign banks, index, EF: Economic Freedom, index, Rule: Rule of Law, index, Infl: Log of average inflation (1990-98).