Access to financial services, or rather the lack thereof, is often indiscriminately decried as a problem in many developing countries. The authors argue that the"problem of access"should rather be analyzed by identifying different demand and supply constraints. They use the concept of an access...

This paper documents a large cross-country variation in the relationship between bank competition and stability and explores market, regulatory and institutional features that can explain this heterogeneity. Combining insights from the competition-stability and regulation-stability literatures,...

Although research shows that financial development accelerates aggregate economic growth, economists have not resolved conflicting theoretical predictions and ongoing policy disputes about the cross-firm distributional effects of financial development. Using cross-industry, cross-country data,...

This paper evaluates (1) whether the exogenous component of financial intermediary development influences economic growth and (2) whether cross-country differences in legal and accounting systems (e.g., creditor rights, contract enforcement, and accounting standards) explain differences in the...

Using a unique database for 74 countries and for firms of small, medium, and large size we assess the effect of banking market structure on the access of firms to bank finance. We find that bank concentration increases obstacles to obtaining finance, but only in countries with low levels of...