No abstract

CESEE banks are reducing foreign funding sources in response to reduced external imbalances, reduced ability to tap international savings, banking group own strategies, initiatives by some regulators, and consistently with uncertainties surrounding the future of the banking union project. In the medium term, the global regulatory agenda and the high foreign presence and stock of FX loans exert opposite forces on rebalancing trends. In the long-term, any funding "new normal" will be determined by the future design of the EU financial architecture. In the meantime, limiting leverage, the use of FX loans and promoting aggregate saving through macro policies and capital market reforms will increase resilience against shocks going forward.

We present a simple multiple equilibria model that incorporates the functioning of crony capitalism. We find that a government which is keen to support the interests of the élite is ready to stand the risk of a bank run since this is part of an equilibrium where investments are heavily subsidized, which favors the élite. However, we find that the liaison between the government and the business community is not per se sufficient to induce vulnerability of financial institutions to panic: the willingness to favor the élite also provides an incentive to rescue the banking system in the event of a run. This stabilizing effect dominates when the élite is relatively large. We also study how a policy of banks recapitalization may contribute to the stability of the banking institution. In fact, such a policy can make credible an ex post recovery of the financial system, thus preventing the panic from generating a self-fulfilling bank crisis.

No abstract

This paper is an attempt to capture the relevance of the relative magnitude of the state and the private sectors in making the transition from central planning more likely to succeed. The basic idea that we introduce is that the growth of the new private sector, in an environment characterized by a severe form of credit constraint, depends on its relative magnitude in the economy. We also propose an extension of the model which examines the issue of full privatization versus restructuring in a credit-constrained environment.