We document the existence of a premium in the green bond market based on the greenness of green bonds. Using BERT, a natural language processing method for textual analysis, we develop a novel measure for bonds’ greenness and document that a 10 percent increase in the bond’s greenness...

Consumer financial health has become a prominent topic in developed economy contexts, but its relevancy and microdeterminants in emerging markets are not yet well understood. This paper operationalizes newly formulated conceptual frameworks of global consumer financial health and financial...

Information asymmetries and enforcement problems often limit commercial lenders’ entry into low-income markets. Using credit registry data, we study the “failed” entry of commercial lenders into a low-income, low-documentation microfinance market, which led to an over-indebtedness crisis....

We document the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital finance and fintech adoption and usage. Drawing on mobile application data from 71 countries, we estimate that the spread of COVID-19 and related government lockdowns led to between a 33.1 and 36.6 percent increase in the relative rate...

Context: There are currently two low-threshold vocational education and training (VET) options in Switzerland for young people at risk: A two-year programme for a Federal VET certificate and a practical training programme designed for young people with special needs. In the present study, we...

Microfinance has played a key role in including the poor in financial markets. This paper uses microfinance data to approximate financial inclusion in the poorer segments of the population and proposes a quantile regression approach to study the development of microfinance markets. Our approach...