This book examines country-specific institutional characteristics that promote/impede bank performance concluding that banking industries that comply less with developed market regulatory and supervision frameworks, are more concentrated and present higher levels of inflation and price regulation will obtain higher performance results, ceteris paribus. Moreover, highly reformatted banking industries will promote diversification of assets rather than traditional intermediation as a value generating banking activity. The results also show that the ranking of efficient government regulation of business will correlate with the positive ranking of country effects while the ranking that accounts for constraints on the flow of investment capital, banking efficiency, independence from government control, government interference in the financial sector, and price stability price controls will negatively correlate with country effects.