This paper analyzes the potential for fintech to facilitate cheaper and more efficient remittances, and to enhance financial inclusion in Central America. Digital remittances remain nascent in the region, primarily reflecting behavioral inertia, small cost advantages of digital over traditional...

Whether and to what extent tougher bank regulation weighs on economic growth is an open empirical question. Using data from 28 manufacturing industries in 50 countries, we explore the extent to which cross-country differences in bank liquidity and capital levels were related to differences in...

The Global Financial Crisis unleashed changes in the operating and regulatory environments for large international banks. This paper proposes a novel taxonomy to identify and track business model evolution for the 30 Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). Drawing from banks' reporting, it...

This paper presents an overview of exposures in the balance sheets of central banks, banks, and other depository institutions during the past decade, with emphasis on asset growth and currency composition. It exploits the IMF's SRF-based monetary data to show: (i) there was a widely observed...

Financial crises result in price and quantity rationing of otherwise creditworthy business borrowers, but little is known about the relative severity of these two types of rationing, which borrowers are rationed most, and the roles of foreign and domestic banks. Using a dataset from 50 countries...

This paper reviews the empirical relationships between credit growth, economic recovery, and bank profitability in Europe after the global financial crisis (GFC). We find that the post-GFC recoveries in Europe have been weaker than previous recoveries, with the 'double-dip' recessions in 2011-12...

The unprecedented expansion of sovereign balance sheets since the global financial crisis has given a new meaning to the term sovereign risk. Developments in Europe since early 2010 presented new challenges for the functioning of private banks in an environment of heightened sovereign risk. This...