"While Bangladesh has embarked on a path to reform its financial system, most prominently by privatizing its government-owned banks, the Nationalized Commercial Banks (NCBs), a sustainable long-term expansion of the financial system requires a more substantial change in the role of government....

"Financial sector development fosters economic growth and reduces poverty by widening and broadening access to finance and allocating society's savings more efficiently. The author first discusses three pillars on which sound and efficient financial systems are built: macroeconomic stability and...

"This paper examines the ways in which lower-income households obtain basic financial services in urban communities in Mexico and the United States. And it discusses the efforts that private sector and government organizations are making to lower the cost or improve the quality of those...

"The authors look at the depth of the financial sector in Bogota in terms of the "financial exclusion" of those, particularly poorer citizens, who operate without accounts in formal financial institutions-the unbanked. They begin with a review of the overall decline in financial intermediation...

"Given the acknowledged need for a new effort to expand the set of available data on direct access to financial services, including a focus on access by those at low income, Honohan provides a selective review of the diverse sources of data that exist and considers how best to build on them. He...

"This paper reviews the evidence on the importance of finance for economic well-being, provides data on the degree of use of basic financial services by households and firms across a sample of countries, assesses the desirability of more universal access, and overviews the macroeconomic, legal,...

"The author describes the presence of financial conglomerates and assesses the extent to which the risks they introduce to the Chilean financial system are mitigated by existing oversight arrangements (and at what cost). In particular, he questions whether the current silo-based supervisory...

"A well developed financial system enhances competition in the industrial sector by allowing easier entry. The impact varies across industries, however. For some, small changes in financial development quickly induce entry and dissipate incumbents' rents, generating strong incentives to oppose...

"The authors examine whether financial development boosts the growth of small firms more than large firms and hence provides information on the mechanisms through which financial development fosters aggregate economic growth. They define an industry's technological firm size as the firm size...