In support of this assertion, and as a prelude to our analysis below, note that for the 2002–08 period, it is the combined share of direct and indirect cross-border credit that is most strongly correlated with readily available measures of financial As shown in Annex 2, cross-sectional regressions of the share of direct plus indirect cross-border credit (in total bank credit) on a country’s financial openness, as captured by the Chinn-Ito index11 (Chinn and Ito (2008)), reveal a strong positive relationship which is robust to the inclusion of various controls. Corresponding regressions taking as the dependent variable only the share of direct cross-border credit show no.