Information from 209 banks in 62 countries is used to develop new indicators of barriers to banking services around the world, show their correlation with measures of outreach, and explore their association with bank and country characteristics suggested by theory as potential determinants....

Recent data compilations show that many poor and nonpoor people in many developing countries face a high degree of financial exclusion and high barriers in access to finance. Theory and empirical evidence point to the critical role that improved access to finance has in promoting growth and...

This article introduces the updated and expanded version of the Financial Development and Structure Database. The database includes indicators on the size, efficiency, and stability of banks, nonbank financial institutions, and equity and bond markets over 1960–2007. It also contains...

Remittances are a substantial source of external financing for developing countries that influence many aspects of their development. Though research has shown that remittances are both expensive and price sensitive, little is known about what explains their price. Newly gathered data across 119...

In many developing countries less than half the population has access to formal financial services, and in most of Africa less than one in five households has access. Lack of access to finance is often the critical mechanism for generating persistent income inequality, as well as slower economic...

This paper uses data across 365 corridors to document time and country variation in remittance fees and explore factors predicting variation in remittance fees. We document a general reduction in such fees over the past decade although the goal of fees below 3 percent has not been met yet in...

Banking supervisors frequently cooperate across countries, but cooperation only imperfectly covers the global operations of large banking groups. We show that this causes significant third-country externalities. Using hand-collected supervisory cooperation data, we document that banking groups...

This paper uses data across 365 corridors to document time and country variation in remittance fees and explore factors predicting variation in remittance fees. We document a general reduction in such fees over the past decade although the goal of fees below 3 percent has not been met yet in...

Until about twenty years ago, the consensus view on the cause of financial-system distress was fairly simple: a run on one bank could easily turn to a panic involving runs on all banks, destroying some and disrupting the financial system. Since then, however, a series of events—such as...