"For a foreign "issuer," the benefits of cross-listing in the United States are extensively documented in the literature. However it is not clear what motivates "investors" to hold American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) rather than the underlying stock of these issuers. The authors address the...

"Following Chile's pension reform in 1981, a wave of multi-pillar pension reforms took place in Latin America (LAC). Their implementation has revealed new policy challenges. To shed light on these issues, this paper reviews the structure and performance of mandatory DC pillars in LAC. The review...

"The author provides a preliminary benchmarking of infrastructure performance in Lesotho in four major sectors--electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology, and road transportation--against the relevant group of comparator countries using a new World Bank...

"This paper examines the implications of bank activity and short-term funding strategies for bank risk and returns using an international sample of 1,334 banks in 101 countries leading up to the 2007 financial crisis. Expansion into non-interest income generating activities such as trading...

"This paper studies the relation between institutional investors and capital market development by analyzing unique data on monthly asset-level portfolio allocations of Chilean pension funds between 1995 and 2005. The results depict pension funds as large and important institutional investors...

"This paper argues that the dominant policy paradigm on financial development is increasingly insufficient to address big emerging issues that are particularly relevant for financial systems in Latin America. This paradigm was shaped over the past decades by a fundamental shift in thinking...

"This paper reviews the evidence on the importance of finance for economic well-being, provides data on the degree of use of basic financial services by households and firms across a sample of countries, assesses the desirability of more universal access, and overviews the macroeconomic, legal,...

"A well developed financial system enhances competition in the industrial sector by allowing easier entry. The impact varies across industries, however. For some, small changes in financial development quickly induce entry and dissipate incumbents' rents, generating strong incentives to oppose...