This note examines the implications of digital innovation for market structure and attendant policies, including financial and competition regulation. There have been several surveys of regulatory responses. This note takes a step back, to look at what the economic theory of banking and...

Fintech is transforming the global financial landscape. It is creating new opportunities to advance financial inclusion and development in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs), but also presents risks that require updated supervision policy frameworks. Fintech encompasses new...

This note provides: (1) an overview of new manifestations of consumer risks that are significant and cross-cutting across four key fintech products: digital microcredit, P2PL, investment-based crowdfunding, and e-money; and (2) examples of emerging regulatory approaches to target such risks....

This technical note is structured in the following manner. Section two provides an overview of the main barriers and frictions that SMEs face to access finance. Section three explores how digitization is an enabler for SME finance and how different fintech solutions address these barriers. The...

Agriculture and agroprocessing are important in Zambia's economy, representing more than 40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and contributing about 12 percent of national export earnings. Agriculture employs some 67 percent of the labor force and supplies raw materials to agricultural...

The groundnut value chain is of major economic, social and political importance in Senegal. Most rural households grow the crop, and its transport, storage or processing is a key source of nonfarm employment in both formal and informal enterprises. Senegal's groundnut sector was originally...

The Central America region is a small market. The region contains around 43 million inhabitants (0.6 percent of total world population) who generate around 0.25 percent of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While the region has successfully embarked on a regional integration agenda and...

Plastics have been a development driver for decades but have turned into a development problem due to their omnipresence in the environment. Marine litter and plastic pollution have attracted much attention and commitments from governments and the private sector alike in the past few years....