During the past decades, firms from emerging economies have significantly increased the amount of financing obtained in capital markets. Whereas the literature argues that international markets have been an important contributor to this process, the role of domestic markets is mostly unknown. By...

Using multiple sources of national- and firm-level data around the world, this paper investigates how the effects of the business environment depend on whether themeasure is de jure or de facto, and how business environment effects differ by ownership and size. The paper compares estimates of...

This paper provides evidence that commercial lenders in Peru free ride off their peers' screening efforts. Leveraging a discontinuity in the loan approval process of a large bank, the study finds that competing lenders responded to additional loan approvals by issuing approvals of their own....

Many microenterprises in developing countries have high returns to capital, but also face risky revenue streams. In principle, equity offers several advantages over debt when financing investments of this nature, but the use of equity in practice has been largely limited to investments in much...