The core principles of Islam lay great emphasis on social justice, inclusion, and sharing of resources between the haves and the have nots. Islamic finance addresses the issue of"financial inclusion"or"access to finance"from two directions -- one through promoting risk-sharing contracts that...

Historically, development banks have been an important instrument of governments to promote economic growth by providing credit and a wide range of advisory and capacity building programs to households, small and medium enterprises, and even large private corporations, whose financial needs are...

This paper evaluates how microfinance performed in providing business financing in 27 Sub-Saharan African countries. It uses data from the 2009 and 2010 Gallup World Poll, a nationally-representative survey of at least 1,000 individuals per country, conducted in up to 157 countries per year. The...

This paper summarizes financial inclusion across Africa. First, it provides a brief overview of the African financial sector landscape. Second, it uses the Global Financial Inclusion Indicators (Global Findex) database to characterize adults in Africa that use formal and informal financial...

This paper assesses the extent to which debt overhang poses a constraint to economic activity in Emerging Europe, as the region emerges from the recent financial and economic crisis. At the macroeconomic level, it finds that the external imbalance problem for Emerging Europe has been in most...

The Czech Republic had experienced a credit boom similar to those in other converging economies in the pre-crisis years. Nevertheless, the consequences of this credit boom were limited as was the impact of the global crisis on domestic financial institutions. This paper describes the...

Croatia employed macroprudential measures to manage credit growth and capital inflows during the boom years of the 2000s, including reserve requirements on loan growth, a marginal reserve requirement on increases in foreign liabilities, foreign exchange liquidity minima, and elevated capital...

In spite of shallow financial markets, Sub-Saharan Africa will not escape the repercussions of the global financial crisis. The global turmoil threatens the progress Sub-Saharan Africa has made in financial sector deepening and broadening over the recent years and underlines the importance of...

This paper introduces a new set of financial access indicators for 139 countries across the globe and describes the results of a preliminary analysis of this data set. The new data set builds on previous work using a similar methodology. The new data set features broader country coverage and...

The recent turmoil in financial markets worldwide has emphasized the need for adequate consumer protection and financial literacy for long-term stability of the financial sector. This Working Paper aims to summarize key lessons from reviews of consumer protection and financial literacy in nine...