We put forward a modern version of the 'developmental' view of government-owned banks which shows that the combination of information asymmetries and weak institutions creates scope for such banks to play a growth-promoting role. We present new cross-country evidence consistent with our...

Competition is claimed to be beneficial in development projects promoting micro and small enterprise finance although there are still some doubts whether these loans can be developed into a profitable business. Actually nothing is known about how many MSE banking units optimally should be...

Recent contributions to the empirical analysis of the relationship between financial system development and economic growth found that an exogenous component of financial system development causes economic growth, is a good predictor of growth and that its growth impact is relatively large. In...

This article investigates the understandings and perceptions of (micro)insurance among low-income people in southern Ghana, using evidence from four focus group discussions. It analyzes how the focus group participants think about various types of insurance - among them a micro life insurance...

Informed capital is a crucial ingredient to a well-functioning market for start-up finance, especially in times of difficult market conditions. For bank-based systems, the question regarding which investors actually supply informed capital has not yet been answered. To fill this gap, we conduct...

We examine the impact of bank competition and institutional factors on net firm entry in a sample of European manufacturing industries over the 1995-2006 period. Taking into account industry differences in the need for external finance, we find that bank competition helps firm entry. In...

Information asymmetries can severely limit cross-border border expansion of banks. When a bank enters a new market, it has incomplete information about potential new clients. Such asymmetries are reduced by credit registers, which distribute financial data on bank clients. We investigate the...

We examine the impact of bank competition and institutional factors on net firm entry in a sample of European manufacturing industries over the 1995-2006 period. Taking into account industry differences in the need for external finance, we find that bank competition helps firm entry. In...

The surge in the German house prices starting in 2010 raised fears about the emergence of a speculative bubble. Given a local nature of housing markets, it is not clear to what extent the bubble, if any, is spread across different cities. In this paper, we test for speculative house price...

We estimate the political economy determinants of budget deficit forecast errors. Since the adoption of the Stability Pact, Eurozone governments have manipulated forecasts before elections. The political orientation and the institutional design of governments also affects the quality of forecasts.