Policy makers and regulators have devoted much effort to reforms aimed at improving financial stability in response to lessons from the 2007-09 crisis. At the same time, much effort has also been directed to promoting greater financial inclusion as an enabler of equal opportunity. To some...

The global financial crisis has given greater credence to the idea that active state involvement in the financial sector can be helpful for stability and development. There is now evidence that, for example, lending by state-owned banks has helped in mitigating the impact of the crisis on...

A large body of evidence points to misaligned incentives as having a key role in the run-up to the global financial crisis. These include bank managers' incentives to boost short-term profits and create banks that are "too big to fail," regulators' incentives to forebear and withhold information...

This paper presents the latest update of the World Bank Bank Regulation and Supervision Survey, and explores two questions. First, were there significant differences in regulation and supervision between crisis and non-crisis countries? Second, what aspects of regulation and supervision changed...

This paper introduces the Global Financial Development Database, an extensive dataset of financial system characteristics for 205 economies from 1960 to 2010. The database includes measures of (a) size of financial institutions and markets (financial depth), (b) degree to which individuals can...

This paper describes our construction of the Global Financial Development Database and uses the data to compare financial systems around the world. The database provides information on financial systems in 205 economies over the period from 1960 to 2010 and includes measures of (1) size of...

Using a new dataset, we measure the large gap between the representation of men and women in leadership positions in banks and bank supervision agencies worldwide. Women occupied less than 2 percent of bank CEOs positions, and less than 20 percent of the board seats in more than 80 percent of...

The global financial crisis revealed weaknesses in the stress testing exercises performed on financial institutions and systems around the world. These failures were most evident in the area of liquidity risk, where now-obvious vulnerabilities were left largely undetected, with stress tests...

How can competition enhance bank soundness? Does competition improve soundness via the efficiency channel? Do banks heterogeneously respond to competition? To answer these questions, we exploit an innovative measure of competition [Boone, J., A New Way to Measure Competition, EconJnl, Vol. 118,...

Using the Panzar and Rosse H-Statistic as a measure of competition in 45 countries, we find that more competitive banking systems are less prone to experience a systemic crisis and exhibit increased time to crisis. This result holds even when we control for banking system concentration, which is...