In recent years, the number of surveys on access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries or within the same country over time. A randomized experiment in Ghana tested whether the identity of the...

Evidence based on firm-level data from 89 countries with updated country-level data on financial structure suggests that in low-income countries, labor growth is more rapid in countries with a higher level of private credit/GDP. This positive relationship with private credit is especially...

A new database of World Bank loans to support financial sector development is used to investigate whether countries that received such loans experienced more rapid growth on standard indicators of financial development than countries that did not. Self-selection is accounted for with...