Bank ownership around the world

This paper describes a dataset on bank ownership that covers more than 6,500 banks in 181 countries. It documents that until 2010, there was a reduction in state-ownership of banks and an increase in foreign ownership. However, the Global Financial Crisis interrupted or reversed these trends. I show that at the country level, there is no robust relationship between bank ownership and each of GDP growth and financial depth. Bank-level regressions show that state-owned banks are less profitable and have a higher share of non-performing loans than their private (domestic or foreign) counterparts. There is also evidence that state-owned banks stabilize credit in the presence of domestic shocks (more so in the presence of positive shocks). Instead, foreign banks amplify external shocks. In terms of domestic shocks, foreign banks are not significantly different from their domestic private counterparts.