"Zervos documents the precise costs of debt and equity issuance, both domestically and internationally, for firms in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Costs include investment banking and legal fees, regulatory and exchange listing costs, rating agency fees, and expenditures for marketing and...

"Powell, Mylenko, Miller, and Majnoni analyze how data in public credit registries can be used both to strengthen bank supervision and to improve the quality of credit analysis by financial institutions. Empirical tests using public credit registry (PCR) data were performed in collaboration with...

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a major role in economic development, particularly in emerging countries, but access to finance remains a key constraint to SME. In the light of the new understanding of the SME finance challenges that this report synthesizes, the Financial Inclusion...

"This paper analyzes data from a randomized experiment on mean returns to capital in Sri Lankan micro-enterprises. The findings show greater returns among men than among women; indeed, returns were not different from zero for women. The authors explore different explanations for the lower...

"The author examines the impact of the volatility of foreign portfolio investment on the financial constraints of small firms. Using a dataset of over 195,000 firm-year observations across 53 countries, she examines the impact of foreign portfolio investment instability on capital issuance and...

"It is generally recognized that the adoption of a new technology plays a fundamental role in the development process. However, the benefits from the introduction of the technology may be unevenly distributed among the population, especially if the markets do not function properly. While the...