Across the world mobile money schemes are being launched. In such schemes financial service providers interact with clients via mobile phones or other mobile devices such as tablets. Service offerings include payments and saving as well as basic insurance products and sometimes credit based on...

Across the world mobile money schemes are being launched. In such schemes financial service providers interact with clients via mobile phones or other mobile devices such as tablets. Service offerings include payments and saving as well as basic insurance products and sometimes credit based on...

This paper develops a method of testing levels of economic integration based upon consumption smoothing, and tests it using data on trade balances across Canadian provinces. The results indicate the provinces are highly integrated within Canada, but integration between Canada and the rest of the...

While expansive literature on central bank independence contains some criticisms to the independent central bank quasi-paradigm, few critical analyses have been undertaken in the years between Friedman (1962) and Posen (1994). The author extends Posen's analysis to developing countries,...

The authors explain the features of an array of futures contracts and their basic pricing relationships and describe a few applications to show how investors and risk managers can use these contracts. Futures - and derivatives generally - allow economic agents to fine-tune the structure of their...

About a dozen developing countries have deposit insurance systems and several others are considering establishing them. These systems are typically created to prevent contagious bank runs, to provide a formal national mechanism for handling failing banks, and to protect small depositors from...

In inclusion circles, the issue of digital identity tends to be dominated by the perspectives of law enforcement (anti-money laundering and – terrorist financing), legal compliance (how long records need to be kept), and technological implementation choices (phones or cards, biometric or not)....

This report contains an initial evaluation of the opportunities for spreading financial services through business networks in local communities across sub-Saharan Africa. The central premise is that small, local business that are able to establish a data-rich, trusted relationship with financial...