This chapter takes stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses recent developments including innovations that might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models.  Using an array of different data, we document that African banking systems are...

This chapter takes stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses recent developments including innovations that might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models. Using an array of different data, we document that African banking systems are...

Theoretical and empirical research has shown that a sound and effective financial system is critical for economic development and growth. The financial system, however, is also subject to boom and bust cycles and fragility, with negative repercussions for the real economy. Further, the political...

This paper examines the effectiveness of cooperation among bank supervisors using anovel dataset on supranational agreements among 4,278 country-pairs. Exploiting that globally operating banks are differently covered by these agreements, we show that supervisory cooperation generally improves...

Do industries that depend heavily on external finance grow faster in market-based or bank-based financial systems? Are new firms more likely to form in a bank-based or a market-based financial system? Beck and Levine find no evidence for the superiority of either market-based or bank-based...

Banking supervisors frequently cooperate across countries, but cooperation only imperfectly covers the global operations of large banking groups. We show that this causes significant third-country externalities. Using hand-collected supervisory cooperation data, we document that banking groups...

This paper offers a critical survey of the literature on the role of financial deepening in economic development, focusing on the role of government. Specifically, I distinguish between the policy view that relates financial sector development to an array of necessary policies and institutions,...

Abstract: Theoretical and empirical research has shown that a sound and effective financial system is critical for economic development and growth. The financial system, however, is also subject to boom and bust cycles and fragility, with negative repercussions for the real economy. Further, the...