This paper estimates the growth impact of disasters, with a focus on developing Asia and its subregions. It finds that severe disasters slow down annual growth in the Pacific island countries by between 1 and 2 percentage points on average. This should come as no surprise, given these economies'...

A sound and efficient financial system is an indispensable ingredient of economic growth. It consists primarily of banks and capital markets, which channel savings into investments and other productive activities that contribute to economic growth and augment the economy's productive capacity....

The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the relationship between financial development and income inequality. Theoretically, there are grounds for both a positive and negative relationship between the two variables. Our main finding is that financial development contributes...