In this paper and the associated online database, we provide new data and measures of bank regulatory and supervisory policies in 180 countries from 1999 to 2011. The data include and the measures are based upon responses to hundreds of questions, including information on permissible bank...

Throughout the past three decades of fast growth, China has undergone tremendous structural changes in its economy. There has been significant and continuing industrialization, urbanization and integration into the world economy. The financial system has also undergone major changes, with the...

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...

This paper examines the impact of terrorism on economic growth and capital formation using data for 152 countries from 1970 to 2003.During the past thirty-five years, the world has witnessed nearly twenty thousand terrorist incidents. The increasingly global scope of terrorism has raised...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is the most recent federal government attempt to help economically distressed communities. It allowed for the creation of 8,764 designated “opportunity zones” in July 2018 that cover parts of all 50 States, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories....

We examine the direct and indirect impacts of natural disasters on deposit rates of bank branches during the period 2008 – 2017. Our approach is one of the first to capture spatial spillover effects of disasters on the deposit rate setting of branches based on their geographic distance from...

Economists have long maintained that a well-developed and functioning financial system is a vital prerequisite to economic growth. Countries with robust banking sectors and securities markets-that is, countries in which credit cards, loans, mortgages, and the ability to issue stocks and bonds...