Despite far-reaching banking sector reforms over the past few years, financial intermediation in Tajikistan continues to lag behind structural peers and the Caucasus and Central Asia region. At the same time, bank interest rate spreads, a standard measure of financial intermediation costs, have...

This paper presents evidence on implementation of the World Bank Group and Financial Sector Reform and Strengthening Initiative "Principles for Public Credit Guarantee Schemes for Small and Medium Enterprises". The evidence is based on a self-assessment of 60 schemes in 54 countries. Overall,...

The relationship between bank competition, firm access to finance, and economic growth is a much debated topic in the economic literature and in policy circles. This paper uses a panel of 23 manufacturing sectors over 2002-10 to investigate the impact of bank competition on industry growth in...

This paper uses a panel of annual observations for 198 banks in 19 Middle East and North Africa countries over 2001-12 to develop an early warning system for forecasting bank insolvency based on a multivariate logistic regression framework. The results show that the traditional CAMEL indicators...

The transition to a net-zero economy presents significant social and economic challenges, particularly for industries and regions reliant on high-carbon activities, hence the need for a just transition. This paper examines exposure to just transition risks-a newly introduced category of...

This paper extends the classic Tinbergen rule within the context of financial regulation, explicitly accounting for the inverted U-shaped relationship between market competition and financial stability. Conventional policy frameworks, premised on independent relationships between policy targets...