We provide new evidence on the effectiveness of microfinance intervention for poverty alleviation. We apply the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method to data collected in a recent randomized control trial (RCT) in India by Banerjee et al. (2014). The PSM method allows us to answer an additional...

We investigate whether the credit contraction that followed the global financial crisis is due to high foreign ownership or high reliance on foreign finding. We apply panel vector autoregressions to quarterly data for 41 countries and find that domestic credit growth is highly sensitive to...

This paper investigates macro-financial linkages in Egypt using two complementary methods, assessing the interaction between different macroeconomic aggregates and loan portfolio quality in a multivariate framework as well as through a panel vector autoregressive method that controls for...

Using firm-level surveys for up to 73 countries, this paper explores the impact of introducing collateral registries for movable assets on firms' access to bank finance. It compares firms’ access to bank finance in seven countries that introduced collateral registries for movable assets...