Reference to gender in language can lead individuals to draw distinctions between genders and re-inforce traditional views of gender roles. To test our hypothesis that language gender-marking exerts an influence on the gender gap in financial inclusion, we draw on data for 117 countries in the...

In this paper, we critically review the literature on finance and inequality, highlighting substantive gaps in the literature. Finance plays a crucial role in the preponderance of theories of persistent inequality. Unsurprisingly, therefore, economic theory provides a rich set of predictions...

State-owned banks tend to increase lending before elections for the purpose of boosting the re-election odds of incumbent politicians. We employ monthly data on individual banks to study whether Russian banks increased their lending before presidential elections during 2004-2019, a period...

This paper investigates how past experience with banking crises influences an individual's trust in banks. We combine data on banking crises for the period 1970-2014 with individual data on trust in banks for 52 countries. We find that experiencing a banking crisis diminishes a person's trust in...

This paper examines the implications of bank activity and short-term funding strategies for bank risk and return using an international sample of 1334 banks in 101 countries leading up to the 2007 financial crisis. Expansion into non-interest income generating activities such as trading...

This work examines the impact of bank efficiency on the bank lending channel in China. Using a sample of 175 Chinese banks over the period 2006-2017, we investigate how the reaction of the loan supply to monetary policy actions depends on a bank's efficiency. While bank efficiency does not exert...

To analyze whether the occurrence of elections affects access to credit for firms, we perform an investigation using firm-level data covering 44 developed and developing countries. The results show that elections impair access to credit. Specifically, firms are more credit-constrained in...

A bank's interest expenses are found to increase with its degree of internationalization as proxied by its share of foreign liabilities in total liabilities or a Herfindahl index of international liability concentration, especially if the bank is performing badly. Our benchmark estimation...

Using data for 91 large banks from 45 countries, this paper finds few differences in the extent, type, and pricing of SME loans across foreign, private, and government-owned banks, even though different bank ownership types apply different lending technologies and have different organizational...