Although South Africa' financial sector is well-developed, microenterprise managers see access to finance as a serious problem. Managers of black-owned microenterprises are more likely to see it as a problem - and are less likely to use bank financing - than white-owned microenterprises....

How does entry by foreign banks affect lending to small and medium-size enterprises in developing countries? Analysis of data from a large cross-country survey of enterprises finds that foreign bank entry benefits firms of all sizes, although it seems to benefit larger firms more.Existing...

We jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. We argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model. quot;Nonrobustnessquot; checks (which purposely exclude some...

Do foreign banks lend less to small and medium enterprises than domestic banks in developing countries? Analysis of data from four countries in Latin America suggests that although small foreign banks lend less than small domestic banks, the difference for large banks is considerably less. In...

Foreign banks are playing an increasingly large role in many developing countries, holding more than 50 percent of banking assets in several of these countries. But important issues about foreign bank entry continue to be debated.In recent years foreign bank participation has increased...

Two data sets are used to study how country and firm characteristics affected firms' financial constraints and their likelihood of survival during the early phase of the recent global financial crisis in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, a region that was especially hard hit. The first data...

The authors jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. They argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model. "Nonrobustness" checks (which purposely exclude...