Interest Rate Spreads in English-Speaking African Countries

By Joe Crowley. Social Science Research Network, 2007

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines interest rate spreads in English-speaking African countries. Higher spreads were found to be associated with lower inflation, a greater number of banks, and greater public ownership of banks. Higher deposit interest rates were found to be associated with lower interest rate spreads, but higher net interest margins. A large increase in spreads in the late 1980s and 1990s may be explained by a strengthening of financial sector supervision. Limited data suggested that poor governance, weak regulatory frameworks and property rights, and higher required reserve ratios are associated with higher spreads.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c0cf565074627d7f701e28a893c9a7921f22058

Citations in the corpus

• The profitability of banks in Japan (2010, unknown): “These results indicate that industry structure does impact on bank profitability, but the directions are not the same across ownership structures.12 12 The negative relationship between bank concentration and profitability has also been found by Berger (1995a) and Crowley (2007).”