Foreign expansion, competition, and bank risk

a column by Ester Faia, Sébastien Laffitte and Gianmarco Ottaviano for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

There is a general consensus that lax monetary policy and banking globalisation were two critical factors behind the Global Crisis.

This column explores how banks’ decisions to enter foreign markets impacted their individual and systemic risk. Results from a sample of European banks suggest that banks’ foreign expansions decreased risk from both an individual and systemic viewpoint.

The findings cast doubt on the idea that banking globalisation was one of the culprits behind the crisis.

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