Research
Publications, working papers and policy research by Ata Can Bertay on banking, financial stability and macro-finance.
I study how banks are regulated, funded and staffed, and how shocks travel through the financial system to the real economy. Below are my publications, working papers and policy reports, with abstracts. Citation counts are on my Google Scholar profile.
Featured
Journal of Corporate Finance, 2026
Using Dutch worker–firm data, we show that IT investment, workforce education and their complementarity drive the finance wage premium; firm risk contributes little.
Working paper, 2026
Linking customs records to Türkiye's credit registry, we show that automated firms borrow at lower rates, a discount that holds in an event study around the release of ChatGPT-4.
Empirical Economics, 2025
Across manufacturing industries in 65 emerging and developing economies, lower gender inequality raises growth in female-intensive industries by about 26 percentage points over a decade.
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Publications
Journal of Corporate Finance, 2026, Vol. 99, 102980
Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2026
Empirical Economics, 2025, Vol. 68(5), 2291–2326
This paper examines whether higher gender equality facilitates economic growth by enabling better utilization of female labor. By allocating female labor to its more productive use, we hypothesize that reducing gender inequality should disproportionately benefit industries with relatively higher female share in their employment. In a sample of manufacturing industries from 65 EMDEs over the period of 1990–2018, we find a positive growth differential of about 26 percentage points over a decade between industries with a high and low female share in employment when they are located in a low gender inequality country compared to a country with high gender inequality.
Journal of Financial Services Research, 2024, Vol. 66, 101–142
This paper provides evidence on how bank performance and strategies vary with the degree of bank internationalization using data for 113 countries during 2000–15. Bank internationalization is associated with lower valuations and lower returns on equity. After the global financial crisis, international banks were revalued particularly if they had stable funding in the form of deposits and if they had more generous deposit insurance coverage. For international banks headquartered in developing countries, bank internationalization is related negatively with the cyclicality of their domestic credit growth with respect to home country GDP growth, smoothing local downturns. In contrast, if the international bank is from a high-income country investing in a developing country, its subsidiary bank lending is relatively procyclical, which can be destabilizing.
Journal of Financial Stability, 2024, Vol. 74, 100891
We explore and summarize the evolution in bank capital regulations and bank risk after the global financial crisis. Using a new survey of bank regulation and supervision covering more than 120 economies, we show that regulatory capital increased, but some elements of capital regulations became laxer. Analyzing bank-level data, we also document the importance of defining bank regulatory capital narrowly as the quality of capital matters in reducing bank risk. This is particularly true for banks that have more discretion in the computation of regulatory capital ratios and are subject to weaker market monitoring.
Journal of Banking and Finance, 2020, Vol. 111, 105701
This paper investigates the empirical relationship between financial structure and employee compensation in the banking industry. Using an international panel of banks, we show that well-capitalized banks pay higher wages to their employees. Our results are robust to changes in measurement, model specification and estimation methods. In order to account for the positive association between bank capital and employee compensation, we illustrate a stylized 3-period model and show that well-capitalized banks have incentives to pay higher wages to induce monitoring. Such monitoring rents of employees at capitalized banks are expected to be higher in societies with weak institutions. Further empirical analysis shows that the weaker is institutional quality of a country the stronger is the positive relationship between bank capital and wages - supporting our theoretical conjectures.
Journal of Financial Stability, 2017, Vol. 28, 225–239
Using an international panel of 104 countries over the period 1995 to 2012, we analyze the relationship between country-level securitization and economic activity. Our findings suggest that securitization is negatively related to various proxies of economic activity – even prior to the crisis of 2007-2009. We explain this finding as the results of securitization spurring consumption at the expense of investment and capital formation. Consistent with this, we find that securitization of household loans is negatively associated with economic activity, whereas business securitization displays a weak positive association with it, and that household securitization increases an economy's consumption-investment ratio. Our results inform recent initiatives aimed at reviving securitization markets, as they indicate that the impact of securitization crucially depends on the underlying collateral.
Journal of Financial Intermediation, 2016, Vol. 27, 51–67
Using bank-level data from 84 countries, we find that a higher degree of bank internationalization is associated with higher interest expenses. Internationalization is proxied by a bank's share of foreign liabilities in total liabilities or a Herfindahl index of international liability concentration. Bank interest expenses rise relatively more with internationalization if the bank is underperforming or headquartered in a country with weak public finances, and especially at times of weak world output growth. These results suggest that liability holders of distressed internationalized banks expect less from the financial safety net since lack of an efficient recovery and resolution regime for international banks can make their insolvency very costly to deal with.
Journal of Banking and Finance, 2015, Vol. 50, 326–339
This paper finds that lending by state banks is less procyclical than lending by private banks, especially in countries with good governance. Lending by state banks in high income countries is even countercyclical. On the liability side, state banks expand potentially unstable non-deposit liabilities relatively little during booms, especially in countries with good governance. Public banks also report loan non-performance more evenly over the business cycle. Overall our results suggest that state banks can play a useful role in stabilizing credit over the business cycle as well as during periods of financial instability. However, the track record of state banks in credit allocation remains quite poor, questioning the wisdom of using state banks as a short term counter-cyclical tool.
Journal of Financial Intermediation, 2013, Vol. 22(4), 532–558
For an international sample of banks, we construct measures of a bank's absolute size and its systemic size defined as size relative to the national economy. We then examine how a bank's risk and return on equity, its activity mix and funding strategy, and the extent to which it faces market discipline depend on both size measures. We show that bank returns increase with absolute size, yet decline with systemic size, while neither size measure is associated with bank risk as implicit in the Z-score. These results are consistent with the view that growing to a size that is systemic is not in the interest of bank shareholders. We also find that systemically large banks are subject to greater market discipline as evidenced by a higher sensitivity of their funding costs to risk proxies, consistent with the view that they can become too large to save. A bank's interest costs, however, are estimated to decline with bank systemic size for all banks apart from those with very low capitalization levels. This suggests that market discipline, exercised through funding costs, does not prevent banks from attaining larger systemic size.
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Working papers
CRBF Working Paper No. 27-003, University of St Andrews, 2026
This paper studies whether firm automation is reflected in the cost of bank financing. We link customs records on automation-related capital goods imports to monthly credit registry data and construct a panel of approximately 2.4 million bank-firm-month credit observations for Türkiye over 2018–2025. Automated firms borrow at significantly lower interest rates and obtain larger loan volumes. The interest-rate discount remains robust after matching firms on pre-sample observables and in an event-study design around the release of ChatGPT-4, which shifted the value of automation-complementary technologies. The discount is reversed at state-owned banks and larger at banks with greater ICT-related human capital, consistent with stronger pricing of automation where lenders have greater incentives and capacity to assess borrower risk. On the firm side, the discount is larger for firms with high income volatility, stronger bank relationships, and greater agency conflicts. It also widens during episodes of unexpected monetary tightening and is amplified when automation is combined with AI-related computing investment. Automated firms also perform better on several real outcomes, including sales, employment, exports, and capital investment. Taken together, the evidence suggests that automation shapes firm outcomes not only through production, but also through access to external finance.
CentER Discussion Paper No. 2014-011
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Policy reports and book chapters
World Bank, 2026
Financial Development Data (FinData) is a new, annually updated database developed by the World Bank Group. This note describes the methodology used to construct FinData's composite indices of financial development, covering sample definition, data quality control, the treatment of missing data, and sensitivity analyses.
Study for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2026
The growth of nonbank financial intermediation in recent decades implies that the risks for banks emanating from their interactions with the nonbank financial sector are now more important than before. This paper reviews these risks in the context of the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), which is the annual assessment of risks to a bank's stability by the bank supervisory authority.
Does Gender Equality Fuel Regional Growth in the European Union?
SIEPS European Policy Analysis 2026:4
Banking Market Integration in Europe and Insolvency Law
In-depth analysis for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2024
Chapter 4 in Current Topics in Finance: Insights on Evolving Markets and Practices, Scala Publishing, 2024
Chapter 31 in Handbook of Banking and Finance in Emerging Markets, Edward Elgar, 2022
Digital Transformation – Why Do Some Significant Banks Fall Behind?
In-depth analysis for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2021
Non-performing Loans – New Risks and Policies? NPL Resolution after COVID-19: Main Differences to Previous Crises
In-depth analysis for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2021
Global Financial Development Report 2019/2020: Bank Regulation and Supervision a Decade after the Global Financial Crisis
Lead author, World Bank, 2020
Albania Credit Guarantee Scheme Assessment
World Bank Report 151164, 2020
Has the Application of the "Fit and Proper" Regime Improved Governance Structures in the Banking Union?
In-depth analysis for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2020
What Are the Main Factors for the Subdued Profitability of Significant Banks in the Banking Union, and Is the ECB's Supervisory Response Conclusive and Exhaustive?
In-depth analysis for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2019
Global Financial Development Report 2017/2018: Bankers without Borders
Lead author, World Bank, 2018
Have European Banks Actually Changed Since the Start of the Crisis? An Updated Assessment of their Main Structural Characteristics
In-depth analysis for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2017
Have European Banks Actually Changed Since the Start of the Crisis?
In-depth analysis for the ECON Committee, European Parliament, 2015
Size and Stability of Big Banks
In The Value of Banks and Their Business Models to Society, SUERF, 2014
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