Which commercial bank supervisory policies ease - or intensify - the degree to which bank corruption is an obstacle to firms raising external finance? Based on new data from more than 2,500 firms across 37 countries, this paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of different...

We find lending by state controlled banks to be significantly more associated with monetary policy than is lending by private sector banks. At the country-level, we further find monetary policy to be significantly closely linked to aggregate loan growth and aggregate fixed capital investment...

We examine the impact of bank supervision on the financing obstacles faced by almost 5,000 corporations across 49 countries. We find that firms in countries with strong official supervisory agencies that directly monitor banks tend to face greater financing obstacles. Moreover, powerful official...

Many seemingly discordant results are reconciled if firm-specific return volatility is characterized as the intensity with which firm-specific events occur. A functionally efficient stock market allocates capital to its highest value uses, which often amounts to financing Schumpeterian creative...

We study the effect of media coverage on corporate governance by focusing on Russia in the period 1999-2002. This setting offers us three ideal conditions for such a study: plenty of corporate governance violations, no alternative mechanisms to address them, and the presence of an investment...

This paper examines micro-level channels of how financial development can affect macroeconomic outcomes like the level of income and export intensity. We investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm's innovation and export activities, using unique firm survey...

Rosenstein-Rodan (1943) and others posit that rapid development requires a 'big push' -- the coordinated rapid growth of diverse complementary industries, and suggests a role for government in providing such coordination. We argue that Japan's zaibatsu, or pyramidal business groups, provided...

The share of finance in U.S. GDP has been multiplied by more than three over the postwar period. I argue, using evidence and theory, that corporate finance is a key factor behind this evolution. Inside the finance industry, credit intermediation and corporate finance are more important than...

The remote inland province of Shanxi was late Qing dynasty China's paramount banking center. Its remoteness and China's almost complete isolation from foreign influence at the time lead historians to posit a Chinese invention of modern banking. However, Shanxi merchants ran a tea trade north...

The global imbalance explanation of the financial crisis of 2007-09 suggests that demand for riskless assets from countries with current account surpluses created fragility in countries with current account deficits, most notably, in the United States. We examine this explanation by analyzing...