Sovereign wealth funds represent a large and growing pool of savings. An increasing number of these funds are owned by natural resource exporting countries and have a variety of objectives, including intergenerational equity and macroeconomic stabilization. Traditionally, these funds have...

This paper investigates the effect of access to finance on job growth in 50,000 firms across 70 developing countries. Using the introduction of credit bureaus as an exogenous shock to the supply of credit, the paper finds that increased access to finance results in higher employment growth,...

This paper documents to what extent firms from developing countries borrow short versus long term, using data on corporate bond and syndicated loan markets. Contrary to claims in the literature based on firm balance sheets, firms from developing countries borrow through bonds and syndicated...

This paper investigates corruption and tax evasion and their firm-level determinants across 25,000 firms in 57 countries, a large fraction of which are small and medium enterprises in developing countries. Firms that pay more bribes also evade more taxes. Corruption acts as a tax on innovation,...

This paper reviews and synthesizes theoretical and empirical research on the role of finance in developing countries. First, the paper presents the stylized facts about firms in developing nations as well as the legal, financial and broader institutional framework in which these firms operate....

Many firms in the developing world -- including a majority of micro, small, and medium enterprises -- operate in the informal economy. The informal firms face a variety of constraints, making it harder for them to do business and grow. Lack of access to finance is often cited as the biggest...

The authors propose a financial model to address the design of efficient risk financing strategies against natural disasters at the country level. It is simple enough to shed analytical light on some of the key issues but flexible and realistic enough to provide some quantitative guidance on the...

Firms often cite financing constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Global capital flows, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease the financing constraints of host country firms. But if incoming foreign investors borrow heavily from domestic banks, foreign direct investment...

The author uses panel data on 394 firms in 13 developing countries for the years 1988-98 to learn whether financial liberalization relaxes financing constraints on firms. He finds that liberalization affects small and large firms differently. Small firms are financially constrained before...