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    <title>EconStor Collection: Economic and Financial Reports, European Investment Bank</title>
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  <item rdf:about="http://hdl.handle.net/10419/45294">
    <title>The Turkish banking sector challenges and outlook in transition to EU membership</title>
    <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/45294</link>
    <description>Title: The Turkish banking sector challenges and outlook in transition to EU membership
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Steinherr, Alfred; Tukel, Ali; Ucer, Murat
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: The paper explores the readiness of the Turkish banking sector for integration into the European Union. We address the issue from four different angles. First, we review the present structure and health of the sector, including the state of the regulatory framework, providing where possible a comparative perspective with the larger EU accession countries. Second, we look at the sector's financial solidity in 2003, with a view to gauging its readiness to adapt to a more challenging banking environment. Third, we look at the present obstacles to financial deepening and identify the most pressing issues that seem to hinder the sector's growth. Fourth, we explore issues of productivity and efficiency in the sector. In a final section, we ask the question of whether the Turkish banking sector is or will be ready in due time for EU accession and formulate some policy recommendations. We conclude that in 2004 the Turkish banking sector compares well with those of the new members of the EU. The major source of financial instability in the past was macroeconomic instability and government involvement. At present Turkey is closer to achieving macro-stability than ever in the past, and the government is reducing its direct involvement. Major strides have been accomplished after the crisis of 2001 in cleaning up a very nontransparent and politicized banking environment and in upgrading the regulatory structure to EU standards. Clearly, the job is not finished yet, with the challenge of introducing risk-management based on Basle II and of bringing the capital market to EU standards. Further consolidation and mergers with foreign partners will be inevitable. Should EU integration become a concrete vision of the future, macro stability has great chances to become rooted in Turkey and the banking sector will quickly move to EU standards, long before any accession date.</description>
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    <title>Ex ante construction costs in the European road sector: a comparison of public-private partnerships and traditional public procurement</title>
    <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/45293</link>
    <description>Title: Ex ante construction costs in the European road sector: a comparison of public-private partnerships and traditional public procurement
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Blanc-Brude, Frédéric; Goldsmith, Hugh; Välilä, Timo
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: Theoretical literature suggests a variety of reasons why a public-private partnership (PPP) should exhibit higher costs of construction than traditionally procured public infrastructure projects. The bundling of construction and operation contracts in a PPP give the private partner greater incentives to make investments in the construction phase to lower subsequent operation and maintenance costs. Also, the transfer of the construction risk to the private partner should be explicitly priced in a PPP. We use data on ex ante construction costs of road projects in Europe to test the existence and the magnitude of any such difference between PPPs and traditional procurement. We estimate the ex ante cost of a PPP road to be, on average, 24% more expensive than a traditionally procured road, all other things equal. This estimate corresponds by and large to reported ex post cost overruns in traditionally procured public roads. To the extent that the two measures are representative, this suggests that the largest part of the ex ante construction cost difference originates from the transfer of construction risk. This, in turn, implies that other possible sources of higher PPP construction costs, including bundling, seem to be of second-order importance in the road sector. The analysis does not allow drawing normative conclusions about the desirability of PPP as a procurement method as it focuses only on one cost component in isolation, without being able to quantify its impact on life-cycle costs and benefits.</description>
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  <item rdf:about="http://hdl.handle.net/10419/45292">
    <title>Public-private partnerships in Europe: an update</title>
    <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/45292</link>
    <description>Title: Public-private partnerships in Europe: an update
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Blanc-Brude, Frédéric; Goldsmith, Hugh; Välilä, Timo
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: This paper offers an updated description of the macroeconomic and sectoral significance of PPPs in Europe, without assessing PPPs from a normative perspective. It shows that, over the past fifteen years, more than one thousand PPP contracts have been signed in the EU, representing a capital value of almost 200 billion euro. While PPPs have in recent years become increasingly popular in a growing number of European countries, they are of macroeconomic and systemic significance only in the UK, Portugal, and Spain. In all other European countries, the importance of investment through PPPs remains small in comparison to traditional public procurement of investment projects. However, PPP procurement is used extensively for major projects and this is spreading out from transport into other sectors.</description>
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    <title>Bank survey evidence on 'bank lending to SMEs in the European Union'</title>
    <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/45291</link>
    <description>Title: Bank survey evidence on 'bank lending to SMEs in the European Union'
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Wagenvoort, Rien
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: This paper presents and analyses the results of a survey of some 400 credit institutions in the European Union carried out by the European Investment Bank in the summer of 2003. An indepth analysis of the survey responses of 74 participating banks leads to the following conclusions: (1) despite the downturn of the European economy, growth of EU bank lending continued at a high pace in 2000-2002; Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were contributing to credit growth at least as much as large firms; the expansion of firm credit portfolios is expected to slow down in the year 2003 across all size classes, but most strongly for large firms; banks expect unused credit lines to increase in 2003 irrespective of firm size, weakening the argument that credit rationing is hampering economic growth; (2) in contrast to conventional wisdom, survey outcomes suggest that bank consolidation is not necessarily harmful for SME lending; large banks in the EU devote almost 70% of their firm credit portfolio to SMEs (this is comparable to the involvement of small and medium-sized banks), and they do not foresee a reduction in their SME lending; it is likely that the European banking market will be increasingly dominated by commercial banks, but this change should neither be seen as a blow to SME bank finance; on the contrary, survey results indicate that commercial banks assign a higher share of their credit portfolio to small firms than savings banks and co-operative banks; (3) while bankers, on average, expect that a new Basel capital accord will make large firm lending more attractive than SME lending, they are not planning to reduce the share of SME loans in their loan portfolios; (4) although a portfolio of SME loans is hardly more risky than a portfolio of large company loans, the effective interest rate on credits to small (mediumsized) firms is on average 160 (90) basis points higher than on large company credits; neither credit risk nor loan generation costs seem sufficient to explain this mark-up, leading to the conclusion that SME lending is more profitable than large company lending; (5) a substantial number of credit institutions consider to securitize part of the SME loan portfolio in the future, but only on a limited scale.</description>
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