The Determinants of Banking Crises in Iranian Economy

The banking structure in Iran has undergone dramatic changes for the past three decades going from a mixed private-public banking system to a complete state-owned banking system. Although banking crisis such as bank panic and bank run has never been observed in Iran, the money market pressure index shows that the banking system has experienced crisis in various times. In this paper, we use the banking crisis data derived by Moshiri and Nadali (2010) to estimate the determinants of the banking crisis in Iran, using a Logit model for the period 1971-2008. The estimation results show that inflation, short term interest rate, and the ratio of domestic credit to private sector to GDP are the main factors affecting banking crisis in Iran. Moreover, the results indicate that the relationship between inflation rate and the banking crisis is U shape. The exchange rate does not have a significant effect on the banking crisis as the Iranian banking system is not heavily involved in the international financial markets and is not strongly connected to the international banking system.