The Arab Spring is a clear indicator of the urgency of achieving inclusive growth and ensuring job creation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where private sector development is still hindered by limited access to credit. Following Kiyotaki and Moore's (1997) seminal model, we...

The Arab Spring is a clear indicator of the urgency of achieving inclusive growth and ensuring job creation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where private sector development is still hindered by limited access to credit. Following Kiyotaki and Moore's (1997) seminal model, we...

Using a unique FinTech data containing monthly individual-level consumption, investments, and payments, we examine how FinTech can lower investment barriers and improve risk-taking. Seizing on the rapid expansion of offline usages of Alipay in China, we measure individuals' FinTech adoption by...

The paper focuses on China's onshore bond market and the drivers of non-resident net portfolio flows into Chinese debt securities. Building on a theoretical model of push and pull factors as a foundation for the empirical analysis on drivers of bond flows into China, static and time-varying...

In a broad sample of developed and emerging economies over the past ten years we apply the approximate factor model in a search for common global and regional driving-forces in stock market returns and volatility. We focus particularly on two emerging stock markets - Russia and China, because of...

We analyze preferences of foreign institutional investors in the Chinese stock market in a sample that covers 2003 to 2014. We find foreign investors changed their investment behavior during the sample period from generic patterns found in much of the world to China-specific patterns. The...

In a broad sample of developed and emerging economies over the past ten years we apply the approximate factor model in a search for common global and regional driving-forces in stock market returns and volatility. We focus particularly on two emerging stock markets - Russia and China, because of...

Is bank- versus market-based financing different in its attitudes towards Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk? Using a novel sample covering 3,783 U.S. public firms from 2007 to 2020, we study how firm-level ESG risk affects its financing outcomes. We find that companies with higher...

Chinese banks likely have more non-performing loans (NPLs) than officially reported. As hidden NPLs earn no interest income, loan quality problems may erode the gross interest income of banks. Using stochastic frontier analysis, we estimate the interest income of a hypothetical...

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...