In policy discussions, it has frequently been claimed that migrants' remittances could function as a "catalyst" for financial access among receiving households. This paper provides empirical evidence on this hypothesis from Mexico, a major receiver of remittances worldwide. Using the Mexican...

In this paper, we study the complementarity between business training and access to financial capital for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya. All participants in a business training program are offered training. One-third of participants are offered loans immediately after training...

Motivated by the financial crisis of 2007-2009 several papers have provided explanations for why liquidity may dry up during market stress. This paper also looks at this issue but focuses on the question as to why the liquidity crunch was not uniform across maturities. As funding pressures were...

I study the allocation of human capital in an economy with production externalities, financial constraints and career choices. Agents choose to become entrepreneurs, workers or financiers. Entrepreneurship has positive externalities, but innovators face borrowing constraints and require the...

Current theoretical and empirical research suggests that small banks have a comparative advantage in processing soft information and delivering relationship lending. The most comprehensive analysis of this view found using U.S. data that smaller SMEs borrow from smaller banks and smaller banks...