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The recent global financial crisis has spurred renewed interest in identifying those reforms in bank regulation that would work best to promote bank development, performance and stability. Building upon three recent worldwide surveys on bank regulation (Barth et al., 2004, 2006, and 2008), we attempt to contribute to this assessment by examining whether bank regulation, supervision and monitoring enhance or impede bank operating efficiency. Based on an unbalanced panel analysis of more than 4,050 banks observations in 72 countries over the time period 1999-2007, we find that tighter restrictions on bank activities are negatively associated with bank efficiency while greater capital regulation stringency is marginally and positively associated with bank efficiency. In addition, we find that a strengthening of official supervisory power is positively associated with bank efficiency only in countries with independent supervisory authorities. Moreover, independence coupled with a more experienced supervisory authority tends to enhance bank efficiency. Finally, market-based monitoring of banks in terms of more financial transparency is positively associated with bank efficiency. .

Corporate governance and market valuation in ChinaIn this paper, we investigate empirically the relationship between governance mechanisms and the market valuation of publicly listed firms in China. We construct measures of corporate governance and market valuation for all publicly listed firms on the two stock markets in China from the firm's annual reports between 1999 and 2001. Using this three-year panel, we examine the effect of corporate governance variables on market valuation after controlling for factors commonly considered in market-valuation analysis. Our empirical results support several theoretical predictions; for example, we find that both high concentration of non-controlling shareholding and issuing shares to foreign investors have positive effects on market valuation, while a large holding by the largest shareholder, the CEO being the chairman or vice chairman of the board of directors, and the largest shareholder being the government have negative effects. Journal of Comparative Economics 32 (4)