This paper describes the recent trends in foreign bank ownership in developing countries, summarizes the existing evidence on the causes and implications of foreign bank presence, and reexamines the link between banking crises and foreign bank participation. Using data on the share of banking...

This paper reviews institutions offering Islamic financial services (IIFS) corporate governance challenges and suggests options to address them. It first points out the importance of corporate governance for IIFS, where it would require a distinct treatment from conventional corporate governance...

Although both domestic and foreign private banks have gained ground in MENA in recent years, state banks continue to play an important role in many countries. Using a MENA bank-level panel dataset for the period 2001-08, the paper contributes to the empirical literature by documenting recent...

The capacity to act collectively is not just a matter of groups sharing interests, incentives and values (or being sufficiently small), as standard economic theory predicts, but a prior and shared understanding of the constituent elements of problem(s) and possible solutions. From this...

Winning"hearts and minds"inthe Muslim world is an explicitly acknowledged aim of U.S. foreign policy and increasingly, bilateral foreign aid is recognized as a vehicle towards this end. The authors examine the effect of aid from foreign organizations and on-the-ground presence of foreigners...

Anti-corruption initiatives increasingly use multi-stakeholder groups, comprised of representatives from government, private sector, and civil society organizations, to drive implementation at the local level and serve as a force for transparency. In theory, the multi-stakeholder groups ideal is...

Using household surveys and bank penetration data at the district-level in 2006 and 2009, this paper examines the impact of Equity Bank -- a leading private commercial bank focusing on microfinance -- on access to banking in Kenya. Unlike other commercial banks in Kenya, Equity Bank pursues...

This paper examines how corporate governance and executive compensation affected bank capitalization strategies for an international sample of banks in 2003-2011."Good"corporate governance, which favors shareholder interests, is found to give rise to lower bank capitalization. Boards of...

Broad consensus exists that the ability of political actors to make credible commitments is key to development. An important and little-explored determinant of the credibility of political commitments is the existence of organizations that facilitate citizen collective action to sanction...