The authors explore the relationship between the relative size of the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 76 countries, they find a strong association...

While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, the authors study whether financial development is pro-poor: Does financial development disproportionately raise the income of the poor? Using a broad cross-country sample, the authors find that the...

Does financial development translate into a comparative advantage in industries that use more external finance? The author uses industry-level data on firms'dependence on external finance for 36 industries and 56 countries to examine this question. The author shows that countries with...

The author explores a possible link between financial development and trade in manufactures. His theoretical model focuses on the role of financial intermediaries in facilitating large-scale, high-return projects. Results show that economies with better developed financial sectors have a...

Although by regional standards, Kenya's financial system is relatively well developed and diversified, major structural impediments prevent it from reaching its full potential. Crosscountry comparisons, however, show the importance of a well-developed financial sector for long-term economic...

This paper describes a new cross-country database on the importance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This database is unique in that it presents consistent and comparable information on the contribution of the SME sector to total employment and GDP across different countries. The dataset...

Reforms to improve both the level and the efficiency of financial inter-mediation in Brazil should be high on Brazilian policymakers'agendas, because of the financial sector's importance to economic growth. This means that Brazil must also improve the legal and regulatory environment in which...

The authors evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources-total factor productivity growth, physical capital accumulation, and private saving. They use (1) a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract...

The authors study the impact of bank concentration, regulations, and national institutions on the likelihood of suffering a systemic banking crisis. Using data on 79 countries over the period 1980-97, they find that crises are less likely (1) in more concentrated banking systems, (2) in...

The importance of life insurance companies as part of the financial sector has significantly increased over the past decades, both as provider of important financial services to consumers and as a major investor in the capital market. However, the authors still observe a large variance in life...