Both formal, and informal loans matter in agriculture. But formal lenders provide much more in production lending, than do informal lenders, often at a higher cost than what they can recover. The Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP), for example, providing about 90 percent of formal...

In reforming the financial sector in transition economies, one important debate is whether governments should try to reform existing state-owned banks (the rehabilitation approach) or whether a new private banking system should be allowed to emerge (a new entry approach). Or should there be a...

The objective of this paper is to empirically test across alternative, apparently observationally equivalent theories of currency crises. Theories of crises are often difficult to distinguish from each other based on the behavior of commonly used predictors. Using a comprehensive data set on...

The authors study the relationship between ownership structure, corporate governance, and the initial public offering (IPO) process. They examine equity ownership by different institutions, such as foreign and domestic financial institutions, banks with and without lending relationships, venture...

This paper presents policy- and outcome-based ways of measuring the progress of market-oriented reforms in both traditional areas of first-generation reform and the areas of institutional reform that have been emphasized lately. These policy areas are the domestic financial system; international...

In the late 1980s, after decades of poor economic management, many Latin American and Caribbean countries undertook structural reform that placed them on a path toward superior economic performance. The authors examine the experience in structural reform in five areas: governance (reforming...

In recent years, foreign bank participation has increased tremendously in several developing countries. In Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, for example, more than fifty percent of banking assets are now in foreign-controlled banks. In Asia, Africa, The Middle East, and...

In most developing countries, capital markets are relatively undeveloped and banks are often unable or unwilling to undertake term lending. And banks prefer to lend to larger, established business with well-developed balance sheets and credit histories. Operations in microenterprises and small...

The authors use propensity-score matching methods to estimate the income gains to families of workers participating in an Argentinian work-fare program. The methods they propose are feasible for evaluating safety net interventions in settings in which many other methods are not feasible. The...

The authors use a two-step, computationally simple procedure to analyze the effects of Mexico's potentially unilateral tariff liberalization. First, they use a computable general equilibrium model provided by the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) as the new price generator. Second, they apply...