There has been tremendous growth worldwide in the mobilization of financial resources outside traditional banking systems. Channeled mainly through capital markets, such rapid financial diversification is posing new challenges for regulators in many emerging markets. This document describes the...

This paper uses international cross-sectional and time-series infrastructure bond risk premium and credit rating history data from the past decade to examine the factors that influence investor risk perceptions and that inflate the cost of borrowing for essential infrastructure. The information...

The Chinese insurance sector is experiencing rapid growth, posing particular challenges to effective supervision. The sector has been growing by over 20 percent a year and there are ambitious government targets for further development. Many individual, often newer, companies are growing at rates...

The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has maintained its momentum in regulation and supervision in the face of exceptional growth in scale and increasing complexity of the banking system. Equally, the CBRC has risen to the demands of the international regulatory reform agenda,...

China has made significant progress in financial inclusion. High levels of account penetration, savings, and usage of payments services have been achieved, largely due to extensive branches and access points (particularly a vast network of rural cash withdrawal points), innovations by non-bank...

During Myanmar's decade of reforms, financial sector reforms were widely recognized to be a critical underpinning of Myanmar's democratization process, enabling the transition to a more egalitarian, accessible economy. Accordingly, the government developed a program of wide-ranging financial...