Domestic Financial Regulation and External Borrowing

This paper studies the relationship between domestic financial regulation and the incentive of non-banks to borrow from banks abroad using BIS banking data in a gravity framework. Conditional on a large set of macroeconomic controls, we find that under tighter domestic financial regulation non-banks borrow more abroad. Non-banks in a country on the upper quartile of a financial deregulation index borrow 21%–28% more than non-banks in a country with minimum regulation. The finding also holds for more disaggregated regulation measures. Interest rate controls and entry barriers to the banking sector are the most relevant types of regulation. The results in this paper indicate that international borrowing and lending is a prominent element to be taken into account in designing financial stability tools.