system, while the Order sub-component is an assessment<sup>of popular observance of the</sup> law. Data on bank concentration and foreign bank penetration<sup>are taken from the World</sup> Bank Financial Structure Database. Finally, we have<sup>taken data from Demirgui,-Kunt and</sup> Huizinga (1999) on the features of the deposit<sup>insurance scheme of a country, in</sup> particular whether insurance is implicit or explicit<sup>and how large the explicit insurance</sup> premiums are.

Our data set includes listed banks from 12<sup>countries, namely the four East Asian</sup> crisis countries (Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia,<sup>and Thailand), four other countries in</sup> South East Asia (Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and<sup>Taiwan), and the four major</sup> Western countries to provide for a benchmark (France,<sup>Germany, UK and US). Across</sup> these 12 countries we have collected data on 137 listed<sup>banks during the period 1991-98.</sup> The banks in our sample include most of the major<sup>listed banks in the country4.The</sup> features of the deposit insurance schemes of the 12<sup>countries are presented in Table 2 of</sup> the Appendix.

To limit the large number of listed banks in Japan, we<sup>only look at the long-term</sup> credit banks (3 in total), the city banks (9 in total), and<sup>the trust banks (7 in total), thereby</sup> excluding the mostly smaller regional banks (127 in total).<sup>To limit the large number of</sup> listed banks in the US, we only include the 22 largest<sup>US banks, namely the multinational</sup> banks (6 in total) and the super regional banks (16 in total) as defined<sup>by Goldman Sachs.</sup> For the 137 banks we have collected a total of 917 observations<sup>across eight years.</sup> Data is missing for 179 observations for a number of<sup>reasons. Some banks have not</sup> reported accounting data for each year, some banks only listed<sup>at a certain point in the</sup> sample period, and some banks were de-listed during<sup>the sample period, because of</sup> government intervention or merger activity.<sup>5</sup> Missing observations<sup>for the year 1998 are</sup> 4 The distribution of the number of banks across countries is as follows (with the number of banks between brackets): France (4), Germany (8), Hong Kong (12), Indonesia<sup>(8), Japan (19), Korea (22), Malaysia (10),</sup> Singapore (5), Taiwan (8), Thailand (12), United Kingdom (7), US (22).

5 In Indonesia, Bank Tiara Asia, a private foreign exchange bank,<sup>was taken over in 1998 by the Indonesian</sup> Bank Restructuring Agency and is therefore missing for 1998. Although Indonesian<sup>Bank Danamon</sup> merged with state-owned bank PDCFI in 1998, both banks continued<sup>reporting separately for another year,</sup> so that we could include Bank Danamon's 1998 data. For Japan, two<sup>long-term credit banks have been de-</sup> listed - Long Term Credit Bank on October 26h, 1998 and Nippon Credit<sup>Bank on December</sup> **14**<sup>**th,**1998 -</sup> and have been nationalized. Since both banks did report 1998 deposit data, we were<sup>able to include the</sup> 1998 data of those two banks as well. For Malaysia, we did not include<sup>Kwong Yik Bank, because this</sup> bank was acquired by RHB Capital and officially de-listed on August<sup>26h, 1997. For Korea, we exclude</sup> Commercial Bank of Korea and Korea Long Term Credit Bank, because they were<sup>not listed, and</sup> Donghwa Bank, because it only started to operate in 1996. The<sup>sample of Korean banks changes in 1998</sup> 12