Essays in banking and international finance

This thesis consists of three chapters, two in banking and one in international finance. The first two chapters examine how bank business models and foreign ownership structures affect bank-firm lending relationships. In particular, the first chapter reveals that foreign banks can overcome their informational disadvantage and lend to the same clientele as domestic banks with asset-based lending, shorter maturities, and credit scoring models, while domestic banks rely on relationship lending. The second chapter presents empirical evidence that relationship lending serves as a liquidity insurance for firms in distress, tolerating temporary bad results, yet extracting rents in the long run. The last chapter provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Central and Eastern European equity markets from the mid-1990s until now and evaluates the value of investing in these markets for global investors.