1. Discussion by Olena Havrylchyk
The Emergence of the Global Fintech Market: Economic and Technological Determinants by Christian Haddad and Lars Hornuf
Discussion by Olena Havrylchyk

2. What has driven the emergence of the Fintech market?
Interesting and complex question because one should explain M-PESA in Kenya and lack of Fintech in Luxembourg.
The Fintech market is measured by the Number of Fintechs in every country/year
An exploratory study with a plethora of hypotheses and determinants.
Important drivers: GDP per capita, latest technology, mobile phone subscriptions, large labor market, new start-up formation

3. Comments on the CrunchBase database
What is Fintech startup?
Is number of Fintech startups a good proxy for the size of the market?
More than 1000 Fintech in the US that provide financing, but only 5 really matter: Lending Club, Prosper, OnDeck, Kabbage, SoFi.
Ranking of countries is sometimes surprising
Russia 11/29 while Sweden 15/29 despite being 3rd largest destination for VC in Europe and is 4th in terms of financing provided by Fintech (CCAF)
Estonia 23/29 despite Transferwise and being 2nd in Europe in terms of Fintech financing per capita
Kenya 28/29 despite M-Pesa
Volume of venture capital per capita is a better measure?
Describing data better. Visualizing data. Summary statistics for all countries, not only 10 largest European.

4. Comments on the econometrics
Dependent variable: count variable → Random effects negative binomial model. Why not a ratio of startups/VC par capita?
70 countries are covered. What happens when there are no Fintech startups in the country? No data or real zero?
If real zero, it must be included in the regression.
What is the use of the panel data?
Research question is better suited to the cross-country dimension. Time dimensions might add noise, especially because many independent variables do not change much over time.
Results are not robust when dependant variable is in log or not (soundness of banks changes sign).

5. 6 Hypotheses: too few or too many?
Test robustness with other measures:
Banking sector fragility could be measured with solvency, deleveraging, NPL
The size of the labour market is just a proxy of the market size, the importance of the labour market would be better judged by STEM education
Other hypotheses
Entry barriers: Financial regulation/credit information sharing
Banking sector inefficiencies and rents: Lerner index and other competition measures from the WB Financial development database.
Streamline the story

6. Related litarature
Havrylchyk, O., C. Mariotto, T. Rahim & M. Verdier, What drives the expansion of the peer-to-peer lending? Rau, R., Law, trust, and the development of crowd financing, Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance