State-owned Banks in the Transition


Book Description

'State-Owned Banks in the Transition: Origins, Evolution, and Policy Responses' reviews the experience with state banking over the last decade in the transition economies of Europe and Central Asia. State ownership of banking systems has undermined economic reform efforts and has distorted emerging markets. This study compares various approaches to reform and calls attention to the significant costs associated with continued state ownership. It concludes with lessons from experience and recommendations for policymakers on approaches to reducing state ownership of banks in the region. The findings indicate that restructuring of state banks has proven time consuming and costly, and governments are better off moving swiftly to privatize or liquidate their remaining state banks rather than attempting to rehabilitate them. This report includes seven case studies of individual state banks that have been reformed or privatized over the past decade. The case studies highlight the challenges of implementing various reform measures and illustrate how such challenges have been addressed in difficult economic and political contexts.




Institutions in Transition


Book Description

"If you want to become a doctor, practice in a war; if you want to become an economist, practice in Vietnam". 1 Phan Van Tiem Vietnam is one of many countries presently undergoing fundamental institutional change: the market mechanism is replacing central planning. So far, the achievements are impressive. In the mid-1980s, the country failed to feed its population, suffered from hyperinflation and faced general economic stagnation. In the early 1990s, the annual economic growth rate had accelerated to some eight to nine percent, the inflation rate had fallen to two-digit levels - sometimes even lower - and the country had become one of the world's largest rice exporters. Add some more details - the increased foreign trade, the inflow of foreign investments, the diversification of agriculture, and ~e various reform measures taken to alter the basic economic structure - and the success story of the Vietnamese transition is told. The country has hence followed the same path as its northern neighbor China, and provided a counterexample to much more cumbersome processes that have been adopted in a number of other transforming countries, notably those of the former USSR. This transition is by no means over. Indeed, it is misleading to think of transition as a process that departs from a well-defined pre-condition and moves towards an equally well defined end-point.




State-Owned Banks and Fiscal Discipline


Book Description

State-owned banks may help to soften the financing constraints of public sector entities and consequently become a factor that hampers fiscal discipline. Using a panel dataset, we find that a larger presence of state-owned banks in the banking system is associated with more credit to the public sector, larger fiscal deficits, higher public debt ratios, and the crowding out of credit to the private sector. These results suggest that the lending practices of state-owned banks should be carefully assessed in any strategy to pursue fiscal discipline.




Public Banks


Book Description

Public banks are banks located within the public sphere of a state. They are pervasive, with more than 900 institutions worldwide, and powerful, with tens of trillions in assets. Public banks are neither essentially good nor bad. Rather, they are dynamic institutions, made and remade by contentious social forces. As the first single-authored book on public banks, this timely intervention examines how these institutions can confront the crisis of climate finance and catalyse a green and just transition. The author explores six case studies across the globe, demonstrating that public banks have acquired the representative structures, financial capacity, institutional knowledge, collaborative networks, and geographical reach to tackle decarbonisation, definancialisation, and democratisation. These institutions are not without contradictions, torn as they are between contending public and private interests in class-divided society. Ultimately, social forces and struggles shape how and if public banks serve the public good.







Privatization Matters


Book Description

Tiivistelmä.




Banking reform in transition countries


Book Description




Privatisation of State-owned Banks in the Transition Economy of Vietnam


Book Description

This thesis surveys the financial reform literature concerning bank privatisation and examined the pervasive factors on the timing and method of bank privatisation in the transition economy of Vietnam. The theoretical and empirical evidence in the literature shows that bank privatisation is the important reforming tool for transition economies to achieve an efficient banking sector. However, different countries with different circumstances apply different timing, methods of privatisation and achieve different outcomes. This study of the transition economy of Vietnam shows that the banking reform process is gradual and incomplete, in a privatisation process that has just started. There is a mismatch between the weak financing capacity of the banking sector and the growing capital demand of the emerging Vietnamese economy. If done properly, bank privatisation can be a key strategy for the government to address this problem and sustain the development momentum achieved by the country in recent years. An investigation of the influential factors on the timing and method of bank privatisation was conducted in this study using a questionnaire survey. The empirical results suggest that: (l) bank privatisation is considered a crucial part of banking reform; (2) privatisation of better performing SOCB is more likely to be successful; (3) the micro factors are more important than macro factors in predicting the timing of bank privatisation; (4) the timing of bank privatisation has positive relationships with the micro benefits and external factors, but a negative relationship with the political factor; whilst the method of bank privatisation is strongly and positively related to the micro benefits, macro benefits, and economic conditions.




State Holding Companies and Public Enterprises in Transition


Book Description

'...very valuable for both policy-makers and researchers...' Professor Athar Hussain, Director, Development Economics Research Programme, STICERD, The London School of Economics and Political Science 'The really novel idea is to bring together the experience of three rather diverse countries and then to discuss Eastern Europe in the light of this experience. State holding companies are likely to play a major role in Eastern Europe over the next ten years or more but very little has been written on them and few of the people advising the East Europeans have any real knowledge about them.' Professor Robert Rowthorn, University of Cambridge '...rich and substantial...' Professor John Toye, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex '...most informative...The conclusions are appropriately restrained, well-balanced and wise...The emphasis on the differences between portfolio management and enterprise management is a distinction that East Europe will eventually have to learn.' Raymond Vernon, Emeritus Professor, John F.Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Large and poorly performing state-owned enterprises pose a problem for countries attempting to move away from government controls towards more liberal economic environments. Privatization is an unproven solution which is proving difficult to implement on a major scale. Intermediate solutions may therefore prove to be the way forward. This book focuses on one of these: the state holding company. It first discusses the state holding company as a managerial form, which permits decentralised public enterprise management, and offers a framework for its analysis. Then, drawing upon the experience of both developed and developing countries, it examines the extent to which the indirect state ownership of public enterprises through holding companies can contribute to transition processes. It shows that the experience of countries like Italy, Egypt and Algeria has direct relevance for institutional structures evolving in the newly transforming countries of Eastern Europe, which are struggling to find a balance between public enterprise ownership and efficiency.




Transition Banking


Book Description

This book examines recent evidence--which essentially began to appear in 1993--related to the development of financial sectors within Central Europe's economies. These systems are currently in transition, each making closely-watched moves toward a market economy.