With extensive country and firm-level data sets, this paper first documents that the financial sectors of most Sub-Saharan African countries remain significantly underdeveloped by the standards of other developing countries. The paper also finds that population density appears to be considerably...

Using household surveys and bank penetration data at the district-level in 2006 and 2009, this paper examines the impact of Equity Bank -- a leading private commercial bank focusing on microfinance -- on access to banking in Kenya. Unlike other commercial banks in Kenya, Equity Bank pursues...

The authors examine the legal and business environments, financing channels, and governance mechanisms of various types of firms in India and compare them to those from other countries. Despite its English commonlaw origin, strong legal protection provided by the law, and a democratic...

This paper surveys existing literature and data to take stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa. It documents different dimensions of the development of the banking systems in the region and compares Africa's banking systems to those of comparable low- and...

Stock pledged loans have become prevalent among large shareholders of listed firms in China. The largest shareholder pledges a greater fraction of her holdings as collateral for credit when the firm is in growth industries, less profitable, not state owned, and has higher leverage. Stock...

This paper argues for a transformation of finance to support the economic and social transformation of the Middle East and North Africa. The paper first documents the existing financial system in the region. The system is heavily skewed toward banking, relative to non-banking services, such as...

Trade credit remains an important source of finance for firms in developing countries and many firms in developed countries, especially those that are young, small, or informationally opaque for other reasons. This paper summarizes the literature and explains the pervasiveness of trade credit,...

Treating data collected pre- and post-COVID-19 as a quasi-experiment, this paper examines the importance of presumed enablers and safeguards in driving the observed expansion of digital payments and digital financial inclusion. The analysis interacts drivers of digital payment usage with a...

This paper studies the conditions under which debt securities that make the cost of debt contingent on the issuer's carbon emissions, similar to sustainability-linked loans and bonds, can be equivalent to a carbon tax. The paper proposes a model in which standard and environmentally-oriented...

Does related lending have positive or negative effects on the development of banking systems? This paper analyzes a unique cross-country data set covering 74 countries from 1990 to 2007, and finds that related lending, on average, does not have any effect on the growth of credit. The authors do...