This paper investigates the African financial development and financial inclusion gaps relative to other peer developing countries.  Using a set of variables related to financial development and inclusion, we first estimate the gaps between African countries and other developing countries with...

AbstractThe following sections are included:IntroductionExamples of Alternative Mechanisms and Problems with the Legal SystemAlternative Mechanisms in China and IndiaAlternative Mechanisms Can Work in Complicated TransactionsIntellectual Property Rights and InnovationsLimited Capacity of the...

Expertly written by leading scholars from a range of different starting points, this compendium presents a synthesis of recent work relating to institutionally-informed accounts from transitional and emerging markets, as well as from mature economies. It specifically focuses on the linkage...

There is a fair amount of evidence that financial innovations are sometimes undertaken to create complexity and exploit the purchaser. Thus financial innovation does have a dark side. As far as the financial crisis that started in 2007 is concerned, securitization and subprime mortgages may have...

We examine the privatization process of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the largest bank in the world by market capitalization, and its dual initial public offerings (IPOs) in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock exchanges in 2006. The Chinese government retains majority equity...

This introduces the symposium on financial economics.

Most analyses of banking crises assume that banks use real contracts but in practice contracts are nominal. We consider a standard banking model with aggregate return risk, aggregate liquidity risk and idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. With non-contingent nominal deposit contracts, a decentralized...