Essays on open banking

This thesis analyzes how traditional and digital information-sharing infrastructures, with a focus on Open Banking, relate to credit market outcomes across countries. The literature shows that informational asymmetries affect credit allocation and have historically been mitigated through relationship lending and formal credit information systems, such as public registries and private bureaus. More recently, Open Banking initiatives have established regulated, consent-based data-sharing frameworks using standardized interfaces, expanding the information available for credit risk assessment and lending decisions. The objective of the thesis is to examine whether and under which conditions Open Banking reforms influence lending volumes and credit quality indicators. The analysis explicitly considers heterogeneity in regulatory design, pre-existing information infrastructures, development levels, and implementation sequencing. Methodologically, the study combines hand-collected regulatory and operational datasets with cross-country bank-level and macroeconomic panel data. The empirical strategy relies on staggered difference-in-differences and triple-difference models. The first essay provides a systematic review of the Open Banking literature and documents the limited availability of causal evidence on credit outcomes. The second essay develops a regulatory classification framework and evaluates how alternative regulatory approaches are associated with lending indicators. The third essay examines transmission channels related to economic development, information infrastructure, and implementation sequencing. The results indicate that Open Banking may operate as either a complementary or substitute informational layer depending on pre-existing information-sharing structures, and that its effects vary with regulatory design, institutional context, and economic development.