This paper investigates whether the country-level financial environment in which microfinance institutions (MFIs) have to work affects their operations. In particular, we argue that the efficiency of MFIs is determined by the extent to which financial markets of countries are developed. On the...

This paper proposes and evaluates several market-based measures for US and eurozone individual bank tail risk and banking system risk. We apply statistical extreme value analysis to the tails of bank equity prices to estimate the likelihood of individual institutions financial distress as well...

Against a background of regulatory uncertainty, this article contends that voluntary action by the banking industry has potential to facilitate climate change mitigation and the transition to a low-carbon economy. First, it evidences the relationship between the banking industry and climate...

As the 2008 financial crisis spread globally, it became widely apparent that an essential ingredient to preventing future systemic crises was reform of the regulation of financial markets. Two ambitious initiatives for regulatory reform are the European Union's European System of Financial...

In this paper we explore empirically a long-standing question in the literature on finance for growth, namely whether the financial structure - in terms of the size of the banking system relative to the capital markets - matters for economic growth. We build upon the existing literature by...

We investigate whether a given economic intervention can mitigate domestic conflicts of different types, regardless of their different origins and characteristics, without government intervention. The intervention that we consider is financial development, measured either as an increase in bank...

This paper examines how financial development affects the sources of growth-productivity and investment-using a sample of 145 countries for the period 1960-2011. We employ a range of econometric approaches, focusing on the CCA and MENA countries. The analysis looks beyond financial depth to...

In this study, I investigate the impact of legal determinants on the presence of foreign banks. Using a panel dataset of 44 countries for the 2005–2012 period, I find that host countries attract more foreign banks when regulatory restrictions on foreign direct investment are low, when the...

In this paper we examine the interaction between social and financial returns in microfinance. Running multivariate regression models and using 1,508 observations on microfinance institutions between 2004 and 2010, we find strong evidence suggesting that institutions with more social engagement...