Cross-border bank lending: Empirical evidence on new determinants from OECD banking markets

Employing data on foreign bank claims from 13 OECD countries on 51 emerging markets between 1993 and 2007, this study investigates specific characteristics of OECD banking markets and lending banks as new important determinants of cross-border lending. We initially provide empirical evidence that in addition to well-accepted “gravity measures”, characteristics of OECD banking markets as well as lending banks’ attributes may describe further important determinants of cross-border bank lending with regard to our sample. Building subsamples of more-developed emerging markets vs. frontier markets, addressing (non) common lender relationships and analyzing cross border lending flows during different time periods, our analysis additionally reveals that both the determinants’ explanatory power and their direction of impact notably vary with respective subsamples.