Cross-border bank lending is a growing source of external finance in developing countries and could play a key role for infrastructure financing. This paper looks at the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs) on the terms of syndicated loan deals, focusing on loan pricing. The results...

Gender gaps in womens' economic opportunities-labor market and entrepreneurship-have remained high in India. Lack of adequate collateral limits women entrepreneurs' ability to access formal finance, leaving them to rely on informal sources, constraining their growth. A small-open economy DSGE...

The past two decades have seen a rapid increase in interest in financial inclusion, both from policymakers and researchers. This paper surveys the main findings from the literature, documenting the trends over time and gaps that have arisen across regions, income levels, and gender, among...

Can fintech credit fill the credit gap in the consumer and business segments? There are few cross-country studies that explore this question. Focusing on marketplace lending, an important part of fintech credit, we use data for 109 countries from 2015 to 2017 to study the relationship between...

Financial inclusion is a multidimensional concept and countries have chosen diverse methods of enhancing financial inclusion with varying degrees of results. The heterogeneity of financial inclusion is particularly striking in the Asia-Pacific region as member countries range from those that are...

This paper explores the relationship between remittances and financial inclusion for a sample of 187 countries over the period 2004-2015, using cross-country as well as dynamic panel GMM regressions. At low levels of remittances-to-GDP, these flows act as a substitute to formal financial...

This study analyzes the drivers of the use of formal vs. informal financial services in emerging and developing countries using the 2017 Global FINDEX data. In particular, we investigate whether individuals' choice of financial services correlates with macro-financial and macro-structural...