This paper studies the business cycle effects on the performance of commercial bank loan portfolios across major developing economies in the period 1996-2008. We measure loan performance via loan loss provisions (that is, recognized expenses related to expected losses in bank income statements)....

In this paper, financial infrastructures increase the efficiency of the banking sector: they decrease the market power (due to horizontal differentiation) of the financial intermediaries, lower the cost of capital, increase the number of depositors and the amount of intermediated savings,...

We analyze factors driving persistently higher financial intermediation costs in low-income countries (LICs) relative to emerging market (EMs) country comparators. Using the net interest margin as a proxy for financial intermediation costs at the bank level, we find that within LICs a...

The poor can and do save, but often use formal or informal instruments that have high risk, high cost, and limited functionality. This could lead to undersaving compared to a world without market or behavioral frictions. Undersaving can have important welfare consequences: variable consumption,...

The objective of this paper is to examine determinants of financial inclusion in high, middle, and low-income countries. We use the World Bank's 2017 Global Financial Inclusion database and apply probit estimation for different measures of financial inclusion, including account, payment, saving,...

I develop and estimate a dynamic equilibrium model of risky entrepreneurs' borrowing and savings decisions incorporating both formal and local-informal credit markets. Households have access to an exogenous formal credit market and to an informal credit market in which the interest rate is...