With extensive country and firm-level data sets, this paper first documents that the financial sectors of most Sub-Saharan African countries remain significantly underdeveloped by the standards of other developing countries. The paper also finds that population density appears to be considerably...

Traditionally, financial systems have been bank-based or market-based. The efficiency properties of these systems are compared in various dimensions. These include risk sharing, information provision, funding new industries, corporate governance, and law, finance and politics. Both systems have...

This paper analyzes the Asian crisis in the context of past and present financial crises to provide a model of asset price bubbles and ensuing crisis in developing and other economies. It is argued that financial structure matters for economic growth but is not that important for preventing...