Payment systems include all the paper (including cash) and electronic systems a country uses to exchange financial value to discharge obligations. Financial markets rely on promptness and certainty of payment and settlement for borrowing and investing. Consumers want convenience, choice (of...

The authors address the following questions in this overview of payment systems: What is a payment system? How can efficient systems contribute to the development of modern, market-based financial institutions and markets? What elements are necessary for payment systems to operate efficiently?...

The objective of this paper is not to review the pros and cons of deposit insurance systems, but to focus, rather narrowly, on the recent adoption of a deposit insurance system (DIS) in Russia, the rationale offered, and the potential impact it might have on the stability and development of the...

Among transitional economies, Poland was a pioneer in bank and enterprise restructuring, tackling it through innovative pro tempore legislation which linked bank recapitalization to improvements in the bank's operating systems, aiming at increasing efficiency and loan recovery. The approach...

This paper analyzes the impact of introducing credit information-sharing systems on firms'access to finance. The analysis uses multi-year, firm-level surveys for 63 countries covering more than 75,000 firms over the period 2002-13. The results reveal that credit bureau reforms, but not credit...

Better insurance against rainfall risk could improve the security of hundreds of millions of agricultural households around the world. However, customers have shown little demand for stand-alone insurance products. This paper theoretically and experimentally analyzes an innovative financial...

The authors investigate what has motivated the large portfolio flows to several developing countries in recent years. Using monthly data on U.S. capital flows to nine Latin American and nine Asian countries (instead of monthly reserves data), they analyze the behavior of bond and equity flows to...

The authors investigate whether firms'access to external financing, to fund growth differs between market-based, and bank-based financial systems. Using firm-level data for forty countries, they compute the proportion of firms in each country that relies on external finance, and examine how that...

Does risk perpetuate poverty in a credit-constrained economy? Jalan and Ravallion study portfolio and other behavioral responses to measured risk using household panel data for rural China. One-quarter of wealth is held in unproductive liquid forms. But only a small share of this appears to be a...

The author evaluates the costs and benefits of debt and debt service reduction (DDSR) from the point of view of five countries that have concluded Brady deals: Costa Rica, Mexico, the Philippines, Uruguay, and Venezuela. He concludes that, contrary to widely held views, commercial banks have...