Remittances are a sizeable source of external financing for developing countries. In the L’Aquila 2009 G8 Summit, leaders pledged to reduce the cost of remittances by half in 5 years (from 10 to 5 percent). Yet, empirically, little is known about what drives the cost of remittances. Using...

Using both market-based and annual report-based approaches to measure lending specialization for a broad cross-section of banks and countries over the period 2002 to 2011, this paper is the first to empirically gauge the relationship between bank lending specialization and bank performance and...

This paper presents new data on the depth and penetration of mortgage markets across countries. There is a large variation across both dimensions of mortgage market development, across countries, but also-in terms of depth-within countries. Mortgage markets seem to develop only at relatively...

This paper presents data on 76 partial credit guarantee schemes across 46 developed and developing countries. Based on theory, the authors discuss different organizational features of credit guarantee schemes and their variation across countries. They focus on the respective role of government...