We provide a comprehensive review of China's financial system, and explore directions of future development. First, the financial system has been dominated by a large banking sector. In recent years banks have made considerable progress in reducing the amount of non-performing loans and...

With extensive country- and firm-level data sets we first document that the financial sectors of most sub-Saharan African countries remain significantly underdeveloped by the standards of other developing countries. We also find that population density appears to be considerably more important...

We provide a comprehensive review of firms' financing channels (internal and external, domestic and international) around the globe, with the focus on alternative finance — financing from all the non-market, non-bank external sources. We argue that while traditional financing channels,...

An interesting aspect of corruption is that its damaging effects on economic performance differ significantly across countries. In this paper, we show that if a central government collects sufficient taxes, it can curtail corruption by paying for performance of local government officials. An...

We explore the relationship between bank branch expansion, financial inclusion and profitability for Equity Bank. Unlike traditional banks, including foreign and government owned banks in Kenya, Equity Bank targets less developed territories and less privileged households. Its presence increased...

This paper investigates the African financial development and financial inclusion gaps relative to other peer developing countries. The paper uses a set of variables related to financial development and inclusion. It first estimates the gaps between African countries and other developing...

Using household surveys and bank penetration data at the district-level in 2006 and 2009, this paper examines the impact of Equity Bank -- a leading private commercial bank focusing on microfinance -- on access to banking in Kenya. Unlike other commercial banks in Kenya, Equity Bank pursues...

Stock returns of domestically listed Chinese firms are lower than that of externally listed firms and listed firms from large developed and emerging countries. The performance gap, measured by net cash flows, between domestically listed and externally listed and matched unlisted Chinese firms,...

The extraordinary economic performance of China and India in recent decades raises questions about the conventional wisdom of using the legal system as the basis of commerce. Despite many well-known advantages, the legal system can be captured by interest groups and become a barrier to change....

We examine the privatization process of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the largest bank in the world by market capitalization, and its dual IPOs in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock exchanges in 2006. The Chinese government retains majority equity ownership of ICBC while...