Sri Lanka has achieved a high level of financial inclusion compared to other South Asian countries. Its financial sector comprises a wide range of financial institutions providing financial services such as loans, savings, pawning, leasing and finance, and remittance and money transfer...

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (known as the GATS) is an important new element in the international framework that affects the regulation of every WTO Member's financial sector. However, except for a limited number of country-specific case studies, no attempt has been made to compare...

The paper studies the determinants of being unbanked in the euro area and the United States as well as the effects of being unbanked on wealth accumulation. Based on household-level data from The Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey and the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances, it...

This paper investigates the role of consumer credit growth and expansion of consumer financial services on the reduction of informal employment in a developing country. I argue that financial services growth should lead to a decline in the share of informal employment given that consumers whose...

This paper measures market power in a decentralized market where contracts are determined through a search and negotiation process. The mortgage industry has many institutional features which suggest competitiveness: homogeneous contracts, negotiable rates, and, for a given consumer, common...

The United Kingdom (UK) has one of the largest financial services sectors in the world, and strong consumer protection regulation. Yet, despite nearly 2 decades of financial inclusion policymaking, persistent problems remain. Many individuals, often the most vulnerable, are unable to get...

Using the industrial organization approach to the microeconomics of banking we model a large (Monti-Klein) bank which is risk neutral and faces credit uncertainty in its loan business. The impact of capital adequacy regulation and the effect of changes in risk on deposit and loan rates are...

We integrate Basel II (and III) regulations into the industrial organization approach to banking and analyze lending behavior and risk sensitivity of a risk-neutral bank. The bank is exposed to credit risk and may use credit default swaps (CDS) for hedging purposes. Regulation is found to induce...

During the recent financial crisis, the Federal Reserve implemented a series of extraordinary and unconventional policies to alleviate the impact of the crisis on financial markets and the economy. In this paper, we examine the effects of these policies on broad financial market conditions,...

This paper examines the implications that alternative regulatory structures may have for resolving failed banking institutions. We place our emphasis on the European Union (EU), which is both economically and financially large and has several features relating to cross-border banking in the form...