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...

What role does the business environment play in promoting and restraining firm growth? Recent literature points to a number of factors as obstacles to growth. Inefficient functioning of financial markets, inadequate security and enforcement of property rights, poor provision of infrastructure,...

Workers'remittances to developing countries have become the second largest type of flows after foreign direct investment. The authors use data on workers'remittance flows to 99 developing countries from 1975-2003 to study the impact of remittances on financial sector development. In particular,...

The empirical literature on finance and development suggests that countries with better developed financial systems experience faster economic growth. Financial development-as captured by size, depth, efficiency, and reach of financial systems-varies sharply around the world, with large...

The authors examine whether financial development boosts the growth of small firms more than large firms and hence provides information on the mechanisms through which financial development fosters aggregate economic growth. They define an industry's technological firm size as the firm size...

The authors explore the relationship between financial structure - the degree to which a financial system is market- or bank-based - and economicdevelopment. They use three methodologies: 1) The cross-country approach uses cross-country data to assess whether economies grow faster with market-...

World stock markets are booming. Between 1982 and 1993, stock market capitalization grew from $2 trillion to $10 trillion, an average 15 percent a year. A disproportionate amount of this growth was in emerging stock markets, which rose from 3 percent of world stock markets capitalization to 14...

Empirical evidence suggests that financial services - such as mobilizing savings, managing risk, allocating resources, and facilitating transactions - influence and are influenced by economic development. And financial crises - widespread bank failures, the collapse of stock markets - can impede...

Is it the institutions or firm characteristics at birth that shape startups and their early growth in developing countries? Using comprehensive data from the Indian Annual Survey of Industries this paper addresses this question by studying the early lifecycle of firms across diverse...

Countries around the world are reforming their pension systems. Most are reforming to reduce thefiscal costs of their existing pension systems. A few young countries are establishing new systems or are increasing the generosity of their current systems, although perhaps not always taking into...