Weather risk and incomplete insurance markets are significant contributors to poverty for rural households in developing countries. Weather index insurance has emerged as a possible tool for overcoming these challenges. This paper provides evidence on the impact of weather index insurance from a...

The relationship between bank competition, firm access to finance, and economic growth is a much debated topic in the economic literature and in policy circles. This paper uses a panel of 23 manufacturing sectors over 2002-10 to investigate the impact of bank competition on industry growth in...

Industry and financial profiles of MENA firms may underpin the observation that MENA country exports are below potential and skewed toward low value-added goods that are unable to spur rapid job creation and inclusive growth. To assess this link, the paper combines analysis highlighting external...

This paper examines how financial development influences foreign direct investment. The direct and indirect sector-specific effects that source countries' financial development and destination countries' financial development can have on foreign direct investment are first identified in a...

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...

Most countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) experienced a growth acceleration in 2011-17. This paper identifies the determinants of this growth by combining country-specific information with the results of a cross-country regression model. Growth was characterized by...

Theory suggests that the effect of banking market concentration on financial stability is mediated by several competing variables. Using a sample of 68 countries from 1997 to 2015, this paper proposes a unified empirical framework to test for the simultaneous presence and impact of the mediators...

Interest rate caps can have far-reaching consequences on the composition and maturity of commercial bank loans and deposits. This paper carefully documents these impacts on the formal financial sector in Kenya after the recent interest rate caps of 2016. Using bank-level panel data from before...

The burst of the Japanese financial bubble in the early 1990s has increased the bad debts of Japan's financial institutions. Japan accounts for about 20 percent of foreign aid to developing countries and for 10 percent of their exports, so Japan's economic health is important. The authors...

Joseph Schumpeter argued in 1911 that the services provided by financial intermediaries - mobilizing savings, evaluating projects, managing risk, monitoring managers, and facilitating transactions -stimulate technological innovation and economic development. The authors present evidence that...