leveraged on average, she finds that smaller firms have significantly less access to bank finance than larger firms do. This … confirms the widely held view that there is a need to improve the availability of credit for small enterprises. "--World Bank …

Contents of Volume 2: Letter of Transmittal, Management's Discussion and Analysis, International Bank for …

both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA …). The first of two volumes discusses the World Bank's goals and strategies; overviews Bank activities in fiscal year 2002 …, and economic dimensions of poverty; presents regional analyses of Bank operations; and provides organizational information …

revenues, costs, and risks in each market segment, and conclude with policy implications. "--World Bank web site …

transparency and accountability in government and industry alike. "--World Bank web site …

"Under the traditional "competition-fragility" view, more bank competition erodes market power, decreases profit … margins, and results in reduced franchise value that encourages bank risk taking. Under the alternative "competition …-stability" view, more market power in the loan market may result in greater bank risk as the higher interest rates charged to loan …

"The authors formulate and test hypotheses about the role of bank ownership types-foreign, state-owned, and private … hypotheses with regard to foreign banks. These banks tend to serve as the main bank for transparent firms, and firms with foreign … across bank ownership types. The data are also consistent with the hypothesis that firms with state-owned main banks are …

obtain measures of bank level productivity by employing the techniques due to Levinsohn and Petrin (2003). They then relate … such measures to a set of bank characteristics. Their main results indicate that state-owned banks are less productive than … their private peers, and that privatization has increased productivity. "--World Bank web site …

conducive to crisis can also be associated with more unequal societies."--World Bank web site …

bank performance. They argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same … likely due to placing nonperforming loans into residual entities, leaving "good" privatized banks."--World Bank web site …