Banking in Africa

From this paper by Thorsten Beck & Robert Cull 

African banks are well capitalized and over-liquid, but lend less to the private sector than banks in non-African developing countries.

Banks and Microbanks

This paper has taken a first empirical step to refine questions around the industrial organization of traditional banking and microbanking. We find evidence that competition matters. Greater bank penetration in the overall economy is associated with microbanks pushing toward poorer markets, as reflected by smaller average loans sizes and greater outreach to women—though there is no strong relationship with their profitability. . .

From the conclusions of this paper by Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, & Jonathan Morduch.

Europe Graph of the Day (Banks and Multinationals)

The graphs are from a new working paper (Schoenmaker and Werkhoven, October 2012) which looks at a correlation between large banks and multinationals within countries.