Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

Capital market development in Brazil is a key policy issue going forward to foster savings, investment and absorptive capacity in a context of prospects for sizable capital flows in the medium term. During the last decade, Brazil has achieved substantial progress in capital market development....

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to highlight important factors that influence funding decisions from the perspective of commercial lenders, and suggest commercialization of microfinance as a source of alternative development finance. Design/methodology/approach - A survey of industry...

The paper discusses the role the financial sector can play in supporting growth in Japan. While overall credit conditions have been accommodative, credit growth has remained weak, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Firm-level SME data and sectoral corporate balance sheets...

Financial globalization has increased dramatically over the past three decades, particularly for advanced economies, while emerging market and developing countries experienced more moderate increases. Divergences across countries stem from different capital control regimes, and factors such as...

From the economists' perspective, the Capital Markets Union (CMU) represents a policy experiment that allows studying how legal conditions, economic incentives and financial activity interact. Recent papers provide economic support for the overall objective of CMU, but the robustness of this...

This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...

This paper analyzes the capital markets and financial intermediation in the Baltic States. It provides a comprehensive overview of the structure and level of development of the financial system, discussing some of the unique characteristics of the Baltics, such as leasing; and comparing the...

This paper presents the primary institutions and economic policies that have led to Chile’s remarkable record of stability and growth over the past twenty years. The core of this policy stance is the combination of fiscal discipline and an open trade policy regime, together with carefully...