This paper provides an overview of the impact that one-time changes in commodity and other prices have on household welfare. It begins with a collection of stylized facts related to commodities based on household survey data from Latin America and Africa. The ata uncovers strong commodity...

Using a new and representative data set of Chinese household finance, this paper documents household access to and costs of finance, along with their correlates. As in most developing countries, informal finance is a crucial element of household finance, and wealth tends to be associated with...

Studies on the link between financial development and poverty have been inconclusive. Some claim that deeper financial sectors should improve the allocation of capital by allowing entrepreneurs greater access to finance, which should particularly favor the poor. Others argue that improvements in...

This paper uses loan-level data from 124 countries over 1995-2015 to examine the transmission of monetary policy through the cross-border syndicated loan market. The results show that the expansion of monetary policy increases cross-border credit supply especially to weaker firms. However,...

This paper studies the use of psychometric tests, which were designed by the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab as a tool to screen out high credit risk and potentially increase access to credit for small business owners in Peru. The analysis uses administrative data covering the period from June 2011...

This paper studies loan conditions in a context where private banks can operate in two credit markets: a free-market with no government intervention and an earmarked market that relies on government funds and where interest rates are regulated. The paper examines the effects of earmarked lending...

Earmarked credit was about half of total credit in Brazil at end-2015, after declining to one third of total credit in 2007, it is back to the levels in late 1990s. During 2008-15, earmarked credit increased from 12 to close to 30 percent of GDP. Initially, the objective was to counteract the...

Nigeria is an entrepreneurial economy with an estimated thirty seven million Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSME) in the country, and their contribution to economic growth and job creation is significant. There are also a large number of self-employed entrepreneurs who support...

Capital markets have been a source of funding for green investments for a number of years, but until recently, financing was predominantly from equity. Private equity, venture capital, and government funding were the most accessible sources of capital when green technologies such as solar and...

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....