This dissertation examines the hitherto neglected role foreign, and specifically German, bankers played in the Chinese economy and the history of modern economic globalisation in China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By following the history of the German Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (DAB) during the last two decades of the Qing dynasty and the first years of the Chinese republic, this dissertation shows how the interaction between foreign bankers and Chinese officials, bankers and entrepreneurs led to the rapid internationalisation of Chinese finance, both in terms of public finance and the banking sector of China’s treaty port economy. Unlike most previous literature, which only depicts foreign banks in modern China as mere manifestations of foreign imperialism, this dissertation demonstrates that foreign banks acted as intermediary institutions that financially connected China to the first global economy and provided the financial infrastructure necessary to make modern economic globalisation in China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries possible. At the same time, this dissertation stresses the importance of Chinese agency for the operation of foreign banks in China’s treaty ports and shows that the interaction between foreign bankers and Chinese actors was made up as much of cooperation as of conflict. In sum, this dissertation not only furthers our knowledge of the role foreign banks played in the modern Chinese economy, but also contributes to our understanding of how China was financially integrated into the first global economy.

Le rôle des banques dans l’économie est suffisamment important pour constituer un pilier central de l’économie nationale, et donc, un de leurs objectifs majeur doit être de servir la communauté dans laquelle elles opèrent, de financer et d’encourager l’investissement afin de créer des richesses. Compte tenu de l’importance de ce secteur, il convient de mesurer ses rendements, d’évaluer son efficacité et de tester la qualité de ses services, afin de l’améliorer et de le développer. Notre recherche vise à tester l’effet des facteurs culturels de la société dans le niveau de qualité des services bancaires du point de vue des clients. / The role of banks in the economy is very important to be a central pillar of the national economy, and therefore, one of their major objectives must be to serve the community in which they operate, fund and encourage investment to create wealth.Given the importance of this sector, it is necessary to measure its performance, evaluate its effectiveness and to test the quality of its services, in order to improve and develop. Our research aims to test the effect of cultural factors of the society in the quality of banking services from the perspective of customers.

This thesis sets out to explore the reasons why individuals and communities affected by development operations are generally unable to influence and control the content of development interventions, and also how this disadvantaged position could potentially be ameliorated. The aim is to identify systematic and conceptual shortcomings at the governance level – that is, the issues that are valid on their own account and do not rely on the ideological stance about sustainable development. Accordingly, the thesis suggests four principles of accountability that, if implemented, would ensure a more balanced governance of development projects. It then explores whether and how decision-making in the context of World Bank financing currently adheres to these principles, both in terms of substantive standards of accountability and the procedural mechanisms that are put in place to uphold these standards. The analysis goes beyond the classic emphasis on the World Bank’s founding treaties, or enforcement of operational policies through the Inspection Panel. Instead, the thesis introduces the distinction between general (public international and domestic law), specialized (operational policies) and project-specific (agreements) rules, which, it is argued, are all directly relevant in the context of individual interventions. The notion of ‘project law’ is suggested as a helpful theoretical construct that enables such an analysis across traditional categories of sources. On the whole, ‘project law’ emphasizes the problematic link between different rules at the project level and points towards some fundamental difficulties of ensuring accountability for development transactions. The key argument of the thesis is that affected persons should be explicitly recognised under ‘project law’ and that such status could be useful in devising a system of accountability at the project level. It is also suggested that the governance of development interventions would benefit from better defined and more stringent public law rules and procedures, since these would clarify the limits of contractual freedom within ‘project law’. As a result of such greater certainty, it would be easier to hold decision-makers to account. Under the current system of World Bank financing, such improvements would be contingent primarily on the will of those who hold decision-making power, and their consent to be subjected to a more stringent accountability regime. In other words, whilst the legal tools may exist, there is also a need for the political will to use them.

This thesis adopts a new operational method to measure and investigate the relationship among cost efficiency, market competition and profitability in major Asian economies by using an unbalanced panel data sample of 278 commercial banks during the financial upheaval period of 2005-2012 before and after the global financial crisis. Firstly, we estimate the cost efficiency by employing different stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) models, which include the equity capital to indicate loss-absorbing capacity and risk preference and cross-country differences to be additional environmental variables. It is generally agreed that cross-country differences influence the frontier technology in the international comparison of banks performance. In this case, we implement the international comparison under SFA models with and without incorporating these cross-country heterogeneities. And the empirical results suggest that cross-country differences are significant sources to measure banks cost efficiency and evaluate banks performance. Secondly, we measure the market competition by investigating a range of approaches: the traditional Structure-Conduct-Performance approach, Lerner index, and new empirical industrial organization Panzar-Rosse approach. And we find that the SCP-Lerner approach may fail to identify the strength of competition and may not always unambiguously distinguish between the market power and the efficiency explanations of market concentration. Finally, following the approach of Boone, we measure the intensity of competition in two ways: the profit elasticity and the relative profit difference (calculated by cost efficiency score and shadow return on equity capital). Then we implement a quadratic quantile regression to compute the integral areas and standard errors for the Boone visual test and Wald test to reflect the relative intensity of competition for different competitive regimes over time. Our findings show that competition of banking industries become more intense in 9 Asian economies in the wake of the financial crisis and that two advanced economies (Singapore and Taiwan Province of China) and two remarkable emerging economies (China and India) play the significantly leading role in this intensifying competition process.

Cette thèse examine les déterminants de la présence des banques à l’étranger et de leur mode d’implantation (succursales ou filiales) ainsi que les effets de leurs stratégies d’internationalisation sur leurs performances et sur le risque systémique. Elle est composée de trois essais empiriques sur l’internationalisation des banques européennes. Le chapitre 1 étudie si le niveau de développement des pays d’accueil et la maturité de leur système financier conditionnent l’impact de la réglementation bancaire sur les choix de localisation et de mode d’implantation à l’étranger, sous une forme exclusive de succursales ou de filiales ou selon un modèle mixte associant les deux formes. Les résultats indiquent sur la période 2011–2013 que les banques européennes choisissent d’être présentes plutôt dans les pays à hauts revenus qui ont des conditions strictes d’entrée et d'activités mais une supervision plus souple où elles s’implantent davantage sous forme de filiales. En revanche, elles privilégient les pays à revenus intermédiaires dont les autorités de supervision sont strictes mais ne restreignent pas les activités bancaires. Elles préfèrent également une présence avec des succursales dans les pays à bas revenus dont la réglementation est rigoureuse. Enfin, bien qu’une réglementation du capital plus sévère dissuade l’internationalisation des banques, toute implantation à l’étranger se fait néanmoins sous forme de succursales. Le chapitre 2 analyse comment la complexité organisationnelle et géographique des banques à l’étranger affecte le risque bancaire et la rentabilité de la banque-mère. Les résultats montrent que les banques présentes dans plus de pays prennent moins de risque, ont une plus faible probabilité de défaut, un plus faible risque de levier ainsi qu’une rentabilité plus faible. Il apparait également que les banques les plus complexes qui opèrent à la fois sous forme de filiales et de succursales dans plusieurs régions du monde sont, à l’exception du risque de l’actif, en moyenne moins risquées que celles qui s’installent uniquement sous forme de succursales. Le chapitre 3 considère la solidité de l’ensemble du système bancaire et teste si la présence des banques à l'étranger par le biais de filiales affecte le risque systémique différemment en temps normal (2005–2007), en temps de crise financière et de crise de la dette souveraine européenne (2008–2011) et au cours des années suivantes (2012–2013). L’analyse montre que la détention de filiales étrangères est associée en temps normal à un moindre risque systémique mais que lorsque le système bancaire fait face à des chocs sévères, l’effet est négatif, persistant et s’accroit durant les années d’après crises. Ces résultats suggèrent que l'internationalisation des banques contribue habituellement à une plus grande stabilité financière mais qu’elle amplifie l’impact systémique des crises. / This thesis examines the determinants of foreign banks’ presence and their organizational strategies abroad and tests how such internationalization affects bank performance and systemic risk. The dissertation is comprises of three empirical essays on European banks. The first chapter analyzes whether differences in economic development of the host countries and the maturity of their financial system are relevant to explain how banking regulation affects the choice of the foreign location and the organizational strategy of an exclusive organizational network with only branches or subsidiaries or a mix model with both affiliates’ types. The findings indicate that over the 2011–2013 period, European banks prefer high-income countries with numerous activity restrictions and weaker supervision but less developed countries with less restrictions and stronger supervision. Regarding the choice of foreign organizational form, banks rather operate subsidiaries in high and middle-income countries with stringent entry requirements but prefer branches in developing countries with stringent capital requirements and greater supervisory power. However, banks always tend to avoid locations with stronger capital regulation than at home. Yet when they are present in such countries, they operate branches. The second chapter investigates how foreign organizational and geographic complexity affect the parent bank’s individual risk and profitability. Our results show that being present abroad is beneficial for bank stability as it contributes to lower default risk. Banks present abroad through both subsidiaries and branches appear to be more stable than banks present under one form only. Being present with branches only is the most effective way to reduce risk-taking. Nevertheless, higher geographic dispersion of affiliates around different world regions is associated with higher volatility of earnings and higher profitability. Chapter 3 considers the state and soundness of the banking system and examines whether the presence of banks abroad with subsidiaries affects bank systemic risk differently during calm period (2005–2007), distress times of the global financial crisis and the European Sovereign debt crisis (2008–2011), and years after (2012–2013). We show for European listed banks that operating subsidiaries abroad is associated with lower systemic risk in normal times. However, when the banking system is facing severe shocks, such internationalization produces on systemic risk reversed and negative effects that are long-lived and aggravated in the years after the crises. Our findings suggest that bank internationalization and foreign complexity are important for greater stability in normal times but turn out to increase instability during years of financial turmoil and in the aftermath.

It has been widely accepted that the banking industry is highly dependent on information technology (IT). Due to its pervasiveness and intertwining nature in most aspects of banking business, IT has also significantly become one of the critical components that facilitate the ability of banking institutions to meet regulatory requirements in an efficient and a cost-effective way. For instance, in the effort to mitigate the activities of money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF), various information on banking customers are timely and accurately gathered and analysed through automation. Furthermore, in many instances, IT systems exclusively built to achieve a similar objective are frequently established, and comparable to most IT implementations in the banking institutions, they are often can be equally regarded as a significant investment as well. Viewed from the longstanding debate on the value of IT investments to organisations, empirical research within the IS domain seemed to have placed less emphasis on the possible contribution of regulatory IT implementations. While it is easy to conceive that these IT deployments were never intended to directly benefit banking business from the outset, a study from this perspective should not be disregarded, but instead, warrant to be equally explored. The rationale for this statement can be attributed to the aforementioned assertion regarding the potentially substantial monetary investments required. In addition to this, it may also be due to the high tendency of stringent regulations being enforced in the future, and hence, could inevitably place a significant demand on organisational resources, and further influence their associated opportunity costs. For that reason, this study has attempted to fill the identified research gaps by conducting an investigation from the standpoint of a topical issue regarding anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing (AML/CFT) implementation efforts within banking institutions. Utilising a conceptual framework that leverages the resource-based view (RBV) to structurally analyse a list of research objectives, empirical evidence of business benefits and the associated capabilities through organisational AML/CFT efforts have indeed been discovered. The benefits are particularly in the form of having the opportunity to leverage various information and infrastructure that were established for regulatory purposes. Further evidence has also suggested that selected AML/CFT alerts have the potential of providing unique opportunity for the organisation to trigger time-critical event-based marketing activities, resulting in a possible improved competitive positioning (ICP). Importantly, by appreciating the insights obtained through the research, a conceptual framework is proposed, which may aid to structurally assess the possible benefits of any organisational regulatory IT implementations.

Face à l'ampleur de la crise financière de 2007-2008, comprendre la prise de risques des banques et ses déterminants est devenu une question centrale aussi bien pour les académiques en finance que pour les régulateurs. Dans cette thèse, nous analysons le rôle joué par l'objectif de maximisation de la rentabilité des fonds propres (RoE), omniprésent dans les banques, au regard de la prise de risques. A travers de nombreux tests empiriques, nous mettons en évidence que le RoE est associé à des prises de risques extrêmes et que des incitations monétaires à maximiser cette mesure existaient pour les dirigeants de banques dans les années précédant la crise. Le RoE, utilisé comme principale mesure de performance dans les banques, s'avère en réalité être un indicateur avancé de leur risque et de leur vulnérabilité dans les crises. Afin de mieux comprendre l'attachement des banques au RoE. nous avons également étudié la légitimité de cette mesure en temps normal, c'est-à-dire hors périodes de crise. Les résultats indiquent qu'avant la crise, les risques latents associés au RoE n'étaient que partiellement pris en compte et que la maximisation du RoE n'a pas bénéficié aux actionnaires des banques. A la lumière de ces résultats, la validité du RoE comme mesure de performance apparait d'autant plus surprenante. Enfin, dans une troisième partie, nous questionnons l'approche générale en matière de régulation qui a été de considérer que plus de capital était souhaitable, et ce quelle que soit la nature des investisseurs qui l'apportent. Nous montrons que l'horizon des actionnaires joue un rôle central puisque les banques qui avaient plus d'investisseurs court-terme ont moins résisté (moins bonne performance et plus faible probabilité de survie) pendant la crise. / The 2007-2008 financial crisis prompted much handwringing among academics and regulators as to why banks had taker on so much risks and what factors drove risk-taking. In this thesis, we focus on the responsibility of the focalization on RoE as main performance measure in inducing risk-taking in banks. Our empirical tests show that RoE is associated with strategies of excessive risk-taking and that bank managers had monetary incentives to maximize RoE in the years leading up to the crisis. While RoE is used as a key performance measure in banks, it proves to be a leading indicator of a bank's risk and vulnerability during crises. To better understand the reluctance of banks to abandon RoE despite its perverse effects on risk-taking, we assess in the second article, the validity of RoE as a performance measure outs ide of financial crises. Results indicate that in the pre-crisis period, the information conveyed by RoE on bank risk was only partially taken into account and that RoE did not guarantee a superior performance for bank shareholders in normal periods. Giver these results, the enduring reliance on RoE in banks is even more surprising and questionable. In the third article, we challenge the general view in the area of bank regulation which is that more capital is better, irrespective of who provided it. We show that the investment horizon of bank capital providers plays a crucial role since banks with more short-term investors performed worse and had a lower survival probability during the crisis.

Recent research suggests that financial system development is important for economic development and for reducing financing constraints of firms (Levine, 2005). Consequently, researchers started investigating the factors that determine financial system development. A group of factors that have been identified are institutional factors. Many researchers have investigated the theoretical and empirical links among historical institutional factors, current institutional factors, and financial system development (Beck and Levine, 2005). There are, however, few studies that have investigated extensively the theoretical and empirical links among institutional factors and financial system development within the African context. Africa provides an interesting context to empirically validate and refine many of the theories that have been postulated to explain the relationships among historical and current institutional factors and financial system development. This is because Africa is in the process of developing its institutions and reforming existing ones and offers an opportunity to examine the impact of institutional factors on financial system development in nascent contexts. Therefore, this dissertation investigated the following research question: To what extent are institutional factors determinants of financial system development in Africa? To answer this research question, this study empirically evaluated the effects on financial system development of historical institutional factors that have been identified by four theories: legal origins theory, disease endowment theory, religion-based theory, and ethnic fractionalisation theory. Moreover, current institutional factors identified by the law and finance theory as possible determinants of financial system development were empirically examined. Furthermore, the links among historical and current institutional factors were empirically studied. The results show that the disease endowment variables are the only historical institutional factors that explain cross-country variation in financial system development in Africa. Additionally, this study finds that the institutional enforcement quality and efficiency of the judicial system are the only current institutional factors that explain cross-country variation in financial system development in Africa. Current institutional factors such as the efficiency of the legal property system and the quality of the credit information infrastructure do not appear to have effects on financial system development. Moreover, the institutional enforcement quality seems to be one of the possible channels through which disease endowment affects financial system development in Africa. This study also reveals that there are few statistically significant links among historical and current institutional factors within the African context. To my knowledge, this is the first study to show some of these empirical links among historical institutional factors, current institutional factors, and financial system development for the African context. The main conclusion of this dissertation is that institutional factors seem not to be determinants of financial system development in Africa to a large extent. In essence, institutional factors appear to matter for financial system development in Africa, but not as much as might have been expected judging from many calls for institutional reforms from the World Bank and others. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings of this dissertation are discussed, and future areas of research are also proposed.

This study investigates E-banking Operational Risk Assessment (ORA) to enable the development of a new ORA framework and methodology. The general view is that E-banking systems have modified some of the traditional banking risks, particularly Operational Risk (OR) as suggested by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2003. In addition, recent E-banking financial losses together with risk management principles and standards raise the need for an effective ORA methodology and framework in the context of E-banking. Moreover, evaluation tools and / or methods for ORA are highly subjective, are still in their infant stages, and have not yet reached a consensus. Therefore, it is essential to develop valid and reliable methods for effective ORA and evaluations. The main contribution of this thesis is to apply Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) and Tree Augmented Naïve Bayes (TAN) classifier as standard tools for identifying OR, and measuring OR exposure level. In addition, a new ORA methodology is proposed which consists of four major steps: a risk model, assessment approach, analysis approach and a risk assessment process. Further, a new ORA framework and measurement metrics are proposed with six factors: frequency of triggering event, effectiveness of avoidance barriers, frequency of undesirable operational state, effectiveness of recovery barriers before the risk outcome, approximate cost for Undesirable Operational State (UOS) occurrence, and severity of the risk outcome. The study results were reported based on surveys conducted with Nigerian senior banking officers and banking customers. The study revealed that the framework and assessment tools gave good predictions for risk learning and inference in such systems. Thus, results obtained can be considered promising and useful for both E-banking system adopters and future researchers in this area.

Depuis 2008, le thème de l’arbitrage réglementaire a attiré beaucoup d’attention. Le contournement des réglementations prudentielles (notamment des accords de Bâle) par l’utilisation de techniques de « Shadow Banking » (telles que la titrisation ou les instruments dérivés) a été dénoncé comme étant une des causes principales de la crise bancaire. D’après la littérature spécialisée, l’arbitrage réglementaire serait le résultat de failles qui émergeraient au sein des réglementations, lesquelles seraient exploitées par des arbitragistes pour minimiser leurs coûts. Cependant, l’arbitrage réglementaire n’a pas réellement fait l’objet d’une analyse théorique et économique satisfaisante permettant de comprendre pleinement ses causes et ses conséquences. La première partie de cette dissertation s’attache plus spécifiquement aux causes de l’arbitrage réglementaire. Bien que l’attention soit bien souvent portée sur l’arbitragiste qui tente de manipuler les structures juridiques de ses transactions pour capturer des opportunités de profits, nous soulignerons le rôle du régulateur qui de manière intentionnelle ou non, crée les conditions nécessaires à l’arbitrage réglementaire. Le mode de production des règles et le rôle de l’environnement institutionnel sont bien souvent omis. Ce point nous mène à discuter en détail de la différence de nature entre réglementations et règles contractuelles et son incidence sur l’arbitrage réglementaire. La seconde partie porte sur les conséquences de l’arbitrage réglementaire. Celles-ci n’ont été que partiellement discutées dans la littérature existante. Efficacité des réglementations, qualité des règles, effet redistributif, création ou destruction de richesses, concurrence réglementaire accrue ou tentative d’harmonisation des juridictions, tels seront les thèmes qui sont impactés par ce phénomène et qui seront abordés dans cette dissertation. / Since 2008, regulatory arbitrage has attracted a lot of attention. Circumventions of banking prudential rules (such as Basel rules) using shadow banking (such as securitization or derivatives instruments) have been pointed out as one of the main causes of the banking crisis. According to the financial literature, regulatory arbitrage would be the results of “loopholes” that emerge within regulations and which are used by arbitragers to minimise their regulatory cost. However, regulatory arbitrage has not truly been analysed from a theoretical and economic perspective which is key to understand fully its causes and consequences. The first part of this dissertation will focus more specifically on the causes of regulatory arbitrage. While light is usually shed on the action of arbitragers who attempt to manipulate the legal structure of their transactions to capture profit opportunities, we emphasize the role of the regulator who purposely or not, generates the necessary conditions for regulatory arbitrage to take place. The role of rules production type and institutions are usually omitted. This point leads us to discuss in detail the difference in nature between regulation and contractual rules and their incidence on regulatory arbitrage. The second part will focus on the consequences of regulatory arbitrage. These have not only been discussed partially in the existing literature. Efficiency of regulation, quality of rules, redistributive effect, creation or destruction of resources, increased regulatory competition or harmonization strategies among jurisdictions will be discussed in this dissertation as potential outcome of this phenomenon.