Insufficient capabilities to manage market risks are seen as a major cause for the failure of Thai banks in the Asian
crisis (Menkhoff, 2000). A credit file study shows, moreover, that also the management of credit risks could have been
better (Menkhoff and Suwanaporn, in press).
For example, the per capita income difference between the richest and the poorest German state (out of 16) is less
than 2.