Informality is a wide-spread phenomenon across the globe. We show that firms in countries with better information sharing systems and greater financial sector outreach evade taxes to a lesser degree, an effect that is stronger for smaller firms, firms in smaller cities and towns, and firms in...

This paper shows that the finance and growth relationship is as important in resource-based economies as in other economies. This paper also documents less developed financial systems in resource-based economies and banks that are more liquid, better capitalized and more profitable, but give...

This paper documents large cross-country variation in the relationship between bank competition and bank stability and explores market, regulatory and institutional features that can explain this variation. We show that an increase in competition will have a larger impact on banks' fragility in...

Financial systems all over the world have grown dramatically over recent decades. But is more finance necessarily better? And what concept of finance – the size of the financial sector, including both intermediation and other auxiliary 'non-intermediation' activities, or a focus on traditional...

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...