Fragile by Design Banking Crises, Scarce Credit, and Political - IMF推荐.pdf

Fragile by Design: Banking Crises, Scarce Credit, and Political Bargains By Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen Haber (Princeton University Press, forthcoming) Fact 1: Systemic Banking Crises are Endemic Fact 2: The countries that are especially crisis prone are not a random draw They are: Argentina, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Brazil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Thailand, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Turkey, Spain, Sweden, ….and the United States. The USA is not in this list of crisis-prone countries by accident The difference in stability between the USA and Canada is not a function of lower levels of credit in Canada Fact 3: Scarce credit is also not randomly distributed Exactly how many crisis-free, abundant credit countries are there? Only 7! • Singapore • Malta • Hong Kong, China • Cyprus • Australia • Canada • New Zealand Half of these are small island or city states. The other half are democracies that have anti-populist constitutions. The puzzle of Fragile by Design If finance is so good for growth, why are stable and efficient banking systems so rare? The Answer of Fragile by Design Politics are “baked into” the property rights systems that underpin banks. Thus, countries do not “choose” their banking systems in any coherent meaning of the word. Rather, countries get the banking system that their political institutions will permit. In order for there to be a banking system, three property rights problems have to be mitigated 1. Majority shareholders, minority sha