Over 50 countries have introduced regulatory sandboxes to foster financial innovation. This paper conducts the first evaluation of their ability to improve fintechs' access to capital. Exploiting the staggered introduction of the UK sandbox, we compare firms in earlier to those in later cohorts....

Fintech promises to spur financial inclusion and close the gender gap in access to financial services. Using novel survey data for 28 countries, this paper finds a large and ubiquitous ‘fintech gender gap’: while 29% of men use fintech products, only 21% of women do. Country characteristics...

Over fifty countries have introduced regulatory sandboxes to foster financial innovation. This article conducts the first evaluation of their ability to improve fintechs’ access to capital and attendant real effects. Exploiting the staggered introduction of the UK sandbox, we establish that...