Publications:
Commercial Banking Structure, Regulation, and Performance: An International
Comparison
by James R. Barth
Auburn University
Daniel E. Nolle
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Tara N. Rice
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
OCC Working Paper 97-6, March 1997
Abstract
This paper provides detailed information on banking structure, permissible
banking activities, regulatory structure, deposit insurance schemes, and
supervisory practices in each of the 15 European Union countries, as well as in
Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States.
Comparisons across the countries show there is a wide range of banking
structures and supervisory practices, and there is a roughly equal division
between those countries that rely on the central bank as the chief banking
supervisor and those that do not. In addition, although all of the countries
currently have deposit insurance schemes, these schemes differ widely in many
respects. Cross-country comparisons of the different aspects of banking do
reveal one common characteristic, however. Almost all of the countries allow a
wide range of banking activities, including underwriting, dealing, and
brokering in both securities and insurance, and these activities can generally
be conducted either directly in a bank or indirectly through a subsidiary of a
bank, rather than through a holding company structure. The notable exceptions
to this common tendency are the United States and Japan.
An appendix presents an exploratory regression analysis illustrating a way in
which empirical examinations of bank performance might be enriched by taking
into account differences in permissible banking activities across countries.
Questions
Please address questions to James R. Barth, Lowder Eminent Scholar in Finance,
College of Business, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5245 (telephone: (334)
844-2469; fax: (334) 844-4960; e-mail: jbarth@business.auburn.edu); or Daniel
E. Nolle, Senior Financial Economist, Special Studies Division, Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency, 250 E Street SW, Washington, DC, 20219 (telephone:
(202) 874-4442; e-mail: daniel.nolle@occ.treas.gov).
Disclaimer
As with all OCC Working Papers, the opinions expressed in this paper are those
of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency or the Department of the Treasury.
Any whole or partial reproduction of material in this paper should include the
following citation: Barth, Nolle, and Rice, "Commercial Banking Structure,
Regulation, and Performance: An International Comparison" Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency, E&PA Working Paper 97-6, March 1997.
Availability
The paper is available for viewing in Adobe's PDF format. The PDF viewer is
available for
download free from Adobe in versions for different platforms. Because
of the complexity of the paper, it is available in the following parts:
Paper text and footnotes
References
Tables
referred to in the text and footnotes
Appendix 1
- An Exploratory Analysis of Individual Bank Performance -- text and tabular
materials
Appendix 2
- Supplementary Information on U.S. Depository Institutions and Other Financial
Service Firms -- tabular material.
The paper also is available in hard copy from the OCC's Communications
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