This paper contributes the on-going debate on income inequality in advanced economies with a proposal aimed at reducing costly investment mistakes that are prevalent among middle-class households. The paper starts by describing how households should invest, compares it with what we know about...

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the links between finance and growth with a special focus on the empirical literature that has shown that the marginal contribution of financial depth to economic growth becomes negative in countries with large financial sectors (the "too much...

This paper develops a simple model with credit rationing and endogenous default risk in which the expectation of a bailout may lead to a financial sector which is too large with respect to the the social optimum. The paper concludes with a short discussion of how this model could be used as a...

This paper summarizes the main findings of the literature on the relationship between financial and economic development (the known knowns), points to directions for future research (the known unknowns), and then speculates on the third Rumsfeldian category. The known knowns section organizes...

This paper builds a dataset on bank ownership that covers more than 6,500 banks in 181 countries (59 low-income economies, 72 middle-income economies, and 50 high-income economies) over 1995-2020. I show that until 2010, there was a reduction in state-ownership of banks and an increase foreign...