We collect data on a number of financial restraints, including restrictions on deposit and lending interest rates and reserve and liquidity requirements, from central banks of six developing countries. We estimate the effects of these policies on financial development, controlling for the effect...

We present a theoretical model of moral hazard and adverse selection in an imperfectly competitive loans market that is suitable for application to Africa. The model allows for variation in both the level of contract enforcement (depending on the quality of governance) and the degree of market...

Utilising four annual panel datasets and dynamic panel data estimation procedures we find that trade and financial openness, as well as economic institutions are statistically important determinants of the variation in financial development across countries and over time since the 1980s....

Political economy theories of financial development argue that in countries where a narrow elite controls political decisions, financial development may be obstructed to deny access to finance to potential competitors. We use panel data on developed and developing countries from 1975- 2000 to...

African financial deepening is beset by a high rate of loan defaults, which encourages banks to hold liquid assets instead of lending. We put forward a novel theoretical model that captures the salient features of African credit markets which shows that equilibrium with high loan defaults and...