International business (IB) studies provide unique insights into understanding firms doing business in multiple locations and environments compared to focusing on particular ones. This article reviews and analyzes theories, practices, and future research on alternative finance in the IB context....

Through a review of the literature, this chapter describes observed forms of alternative finance around the world, as well as their roles. It also uses World Bank Survey Data to empirically compare alternative finance development across countries. We find that alternative finance is essential...

Alternative finance based on social and business networks reaches back far into history. Despite the modern development of banks and financial markets, on a global scale, it remains prevalent and continually transforms with technological advancements. Its macroeconomic value and competitiveness...

This chapter reviews theories and empirical evidence on the competitiveness of alternative finance. The implicit benefits in alternative finance transactions motivate efforts and improve project outcomes. The informational and incentive advantages in alternative finance often make them a...

Social relationship and business connections create implicit benefits between borrowers and lenders. We model how implicit benefits and repayment enforcement costs influence credit allocation, cost, and renegotiation. The optimal solution illustrates that financing with implicit benefits can in...

With extensive cross-country datasets and India firm samples, as well as our own surveys of small and medium firms, we examine the legal and business environments, financing channels, and growth patterns of different types of firms in India. Despite the English common-law origin and a...

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...

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 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...

The conventional wisdom up until the crisis was that efficient financial systems required privately owned banks and financial institutions. The events since 2007 have shown that financial systems such as China's, where banks are government owned but are also publicly listed can have a...