Bank ownership and drivers of credit growth in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe

In this paper, we analyse the determinants of credit growth for banks operating in 20 countries in the post-communist Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (CESEE). We focus on foreign-owned banks and the parent-subsidiary nexus against the background of all banks operating in this part of Europe. Our goal is to determine whether the macroeconomic and bank-specific determinants for host countries have a similar impact on the entire group of banks operating in CESEE and on its subset of foreign-owned banks and whether the rate of credit growth could be considered ceteris paribus equal across the foreign-owned and the complete set of banks in the CESEE. To this end, we use panel data regressions on approximately 4,600 bank-year observations over the period from 1995 to 2014. We conclude that the determinants of banks’ behaviour in the CESEE countries are consistent regardless of these banks’ ownership, the period and their EU membership. Although having a foreign investor expands the set of relevant determinants, the presence of such investors does not overshadow the importance of local conditions.