This paper studies the impact of financial inclusion on wealth accumulation. Exploiting the US interstate branching deregulation between 1994 and 2005, we find that an exogenous expansion of bank branches increases low-income household financial inclusion. We then show that financial inclusion...

We collect new data to assess the importance of supply-side credit market frictions by studying the impact of financial sector recapitalization packages on the growth performance of firms in a large cross-section of 50 countries during the recent crisis. We develop an identification strategy...

Consider a competitive bank whose illiquid asset portfolio is funded by short-term debt that has to be refinanced before the asset matures. We show that in this setting maximal transparency is not socially optimal, and that the existence of social externalities of bank failures further lowers...