The global economy has been facing a series of adverse shocks in recent years including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, high inflation, and interest rate shocks driven by global monetary policy normalization. The high cost of fossil fuels since 2021,...

As it is becoming clear that climate change will exert a major impact on inflation, economic growth, and financial system stability, central banks and financial regulators have increasingly recognized that they can no longer ignore climate change and other environmental issues. In general,...

Climate finance has witnessed significant growth as a burgeoning field of long-term finance globally in recent years. However, it has yet to reach the necessary scale for mobilizing sufficient funds to support the decarbonization efforts of businesses. This shortfall is partly attributed to...

In the face of the increasing frequency of climate change-related natural hazards and the resulting losses across the globe, companies are recognizing the importance of addressing climate-related risks and opportunities and taking timely actions to cope with them. While numerous large companies...

Low inflation hit the Japanese economy shortly after the burst of the bubble in stocks and real estate in 1991 and has haunted the domestic economy ever since. The bubbles were partly attributable to prolonged monetary easing in the second half of 1980s, which was conducted to increase domestic...

Since the Asian financial crisis, strong and increasingly prevalent views have emerged thatbanks are no more functional and that economic development should rely on capital markets. Suchviews claim that the Asian crisis was caused by heavy dependence of firms’ investment on bank loansand that...

This paper undertakes an overview of the financial structures in the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. It stresses that while the Asian countries have lowered their dependence on bank loans, especially since the crisis, the banking sector has remained dominant. Given the fact...

In Asia, commercial banks are already playing an important role in the corporate bond market as issuers, underwriters, investors, and guarantors. This reflects banks’ dominance of their financial markets, their high reputation, and the informational advantages they enjoy. Thus, banks should be...

Since India embarked on a period of reform, the corporate financial structures have depended on the firms’ characteristics. For example, new, small, unprofitable, high-risk firms tend to depend more heavily on domestic loans than old, large, profitable, low-risk firms, as the latter can...

Since the initiation of banking sector reforms in 1991, India’s highly regulated banking sector has seen significant and favorable changes. Initially, foreign and private sector banks generally outperformed public sector (nationalized and State Bank of India) banks, but such differences have...