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,...

In an overlapping generations economy with (incomplete) financial markets but no intermediaries, there is underinvestment in safe assets. In an economy with intermediaries and no financial markets, accumulating reserves of safe assets allows returns to be smoothed, nondiversifiable risk to be...

In this paper we study the intra-group transactions between the parent bank and its foreign subsidiaries in European Union countries during the crisis. We use hand-collected data from annual statements on related party transaction and find that they may create a serious problem for the stability...

The Eurozone is in the midst of a deep crisis. We argue that the attempts to control government deficits and debts using the Stability and Growth Pact have failed. Moreover, austerity policies are inducing downward spirals in terms of growth. Political leaders have promised deeper political,...

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 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 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...

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...

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...