Political Stability and Bank Flows: New Evidence

Abstract

In this paper, we use a rich dataset of several countries to analyze how sound political measures affect cross-border bank flows. Furthermore, our work is the first to comprehensively examine various components of political stability on the aforementioned subject using a larger sample than previous studies, and covering the period 1984–2013. Our paper will inform policy makers which particular aspects of political stability have a significant effect on cross-border bank flows and provide an outline on the favorable long term political and institutional development to increase such flows. We find that sound political measures—and therefore, higher political stability—increase cross-border bank flows, especially in advanced economies. Moreover, we find that in advanced economies, the political stability components; socioeconomic conditions, investment profile, corruption within the political system, religious tensions, ethnic tensions, and bureaucracy quality have a positive and close association with such bank flows. In our work, we also find that policies aiming to increase political stability have a stronger impact after the financial crisis of 2008, namely with regard to policies that affect socioeconomic conditions, investment profile, corruption within the political system and religious tensions.