Working Paper
Savings By and For the Poor
The poor can and do save, but often use formal or informal instruments that have high risk, high cost, and limited functionality. This could lead to undersaving compared to a world without market or behavioural frictions. Undersaving can have...
Working Paper
Financial Markets and Governments
A survey of the changing relationship between the market for political services and the market for financial services.
Working Paper
The Change of the Financial System and Developmental State in Korea
This study examines the role of institutions and their change related to the rapid economic development and the 1997 Korean financial crisis. In Korea, the government built a state-led financial system through the 1960s and 1970s and a specific...
Working Paper
Prudential Regulation of Banks in Less Developed Economies
Beginning with an empirical analysis of banking crises using a logit econometric model covering a sample of developed and developing countries between 1980-97, the paper suggests that crises are more likely in years of low growth and high real...
Journal Article
Financial Liberalization and Banking Sector Efficiency in India
The Indian financial sector has undergone a significant structural transformation since the initiation of financial liberalization during 1990’s. It brought significant changes in the financial sector in general and banking in particular. While there...
Working Paper
A look offshore: unpacking the routes of misinvoicing in international trade
We study whether misinvoicing in international trade is reflected in cross-border bank accounts as reported by offshore financial centres. We show that residents hold more offshore wealth when local misinvoicing practices thrive, especially for under...
Working Paper
The financial inclusion agenda
Using a unique district-level panel dataset, we investigate the effect of banking system penetration on financial inclusion in Ghana. To purge potential endogeneity bias in the underlying relationship, we exploit a change in the policy environment of...
Journal Article
Prudential Regulation of Banks in Less Developed Economies
This article argues that developing countries face inherent obstacles in setting up efficient financial regulation, and building up a sound banking sector: the presence of multiple tasks and multiple principals, poor institutions, lack of economies...
Journal Article
How Fast Do Banks Adjust?
This paper deals with a dynamic adjustment process in which adjustment of a key variable input (labor) towards its desired level is modeled in a panel data context. The partial adjustment type model is extended to make the adjustment parameter both...
Working Paper
The European Investment Bank
The paper considers the experience of the European Investment Bank and addresses policy lessons for developing countries as they seek finance for development. The paper argues that the key lesson for developing countries is that the traditional role...
Working Paper
Foreign Banks and Credit Volatility
Foreign bank presence has substantially increased in Latin America during the second half of the 1990s, which has prompted an intense debate on its banking and macroeconomic consequences. In this paper, we apply ARCH techniques to jointly estimate...
Journal Article
The financial inclusion agenda
ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | Using a unique district-level panel dataset, we investigate the effect of banking system penetration on financial inclusion in Ghana. To purge potential endogeneity bias in the underlying relationship, we exploit a change...
Journal Article
Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets
Poor rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial risks, which they handle with risk-management and risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance through savings and informal insurance mechanisms. Despite these mechanisms...
Book
Finance and the Real Economy
The present volume contains six papers on financial-policy issues and country experiences, presented at a joint ECLAC/UNU-WIDER/UNCTAD seminar held at ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile, on 5-6 October 1992. In the first, Yilmaz Akyuz discusses...