This paper utilizes data for African countries to analyze the extent to which financial development affects the dynamics of the relationship between exchange rate flexibility and economic growth. The findings indicate that financial development exerts a positive influence on the relationship...

This paper argues for a transformation of finance to support the economic and social transformation of the Middle East and North Africa. The paper first documents the existing financial system in the region. The system is heavily skewed toward banking, relative to non-banking services, such as...

This paper revisits trends in bank privatization and analyzes their economic impact over the past 25 years. Building on a novel data set of privatization events for 70 developed and developing countries, it shows that bank privatization became more frequent since the Global Financial Crisis,...

There has been significant development of Mali's banking sector in recent years, but it remains shallow, and access to banking services is limited. With the opening of a new bank in 2014, there are now 14 commercial banks operating in Mali. There has been a positive evolution of the banking...

Governments play a very important role in supporting innovation, managing the disruptive effects of innovation, and ensuring that the benefits of innovation are broadly shared in the long run. This paper reviews the literature on market mechanisms that translate innovation into jobs and policies...

This paper discusses the evolution of the Egyptian banking sector and the main trends in financial development in the Arab Republic of Egypt. The paper examines empirically the relationship between the development of the financial sector and economic growth in Egypt between 1980 and 2016. It...

The report aims to explore and analyze the major gaps in financial inclusion and access to finance in Romania, as identified in the Technical Note on Financial Intermediation prepared in the context of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) (2018). The FSAP technical note analyzed the...

Private savings play a pivotal role in financing development and sustaining growth. Recently, there have been many theoretical developments that underpin key determinants of savings behavior, many of which merit empirical investigation. Understanding the dynamics of the determinants of savings...

Mexico's challenges in infrastructure finance can be framed along similar lines as other Advanced Economies (AEs) and large Emerging Market Economies (EMEs). Mexico is particularly well placed to make capital markets a reliable financing source complementing bank financing. Its capital markets...