Making Finance Work for Africa presents a coherent policy approach that addresses African priorities and can work in African conditions. It challenges the applicability of some conventional views on a range of issues from securities markets and banking regulation to the organization of...

Attempts to raise a significant percentage of gross domestic product in revenue from a broad-based financial transactions tax are likely to fail both by raising much less revenue than expected and by generating far-reaching changes in economic behavior. Although the side-effects would include a...

The authors argue that attempts to raise a significant percentage of gross domestic product in revenue from a broad-based financial transactions tax are likely to fail both by raising much less revenue than expected and by generating far-reaching changes in economic behavior. They point out...

The dramatic events of the late 1990s, which followed a wave of financial crises going back to the early 1980s, brought to center stage the issue of financial sector policy in developing countries. Many recent books have presented a chronology and interpretation of the crises, but it is little...

The volume is divided into five traditional areas of finance: the macroeconomy, banking, securities markets, pension issues, and regulations. Four cross-cutting messages emerge. First, the erosion of national frontiers by trade, tourism, migration, and capital account liberalization means that...

This volume examines the possibilities and pitfalls to successful financial sector tax reform from theoretical, empirical and practical perspectives. It explores the possibilities and limitations of "big ideas" such as removal of all capital income taxation, the application of VAT to financial...

This paper presents new empirical evidence on how financial sector policy can help the poor. It is often thought that promotion of specialized microfinance institutions is the best or only way forward. However, a strong mainstream financial system is also pro-poor-perhaps even more so: while...

Whether and when does banking serve to stabilize the economy? The authors view the banking system as a filter through which foreign and domestic shocks feed through to the domestic economy. The filter can dampen or amplify the shocks through various credit market channels, including credit...

The authors question the widespread belief that market discipline on banks cannot be effective in less developed financial environments. There is no systematic tendency for low-income countries to lack the prerequisites for market discipline. Offsetting factors to the weaker market and formal...

Systematic information on household financial asset holdings in developing countries is very sparse. The author reviews some available data and current policy debates. Although financial asset holdings by households are highly concentrated, deeper financial systems are correlated with improved...