Credit affects individuals' perceptions and experiences of inequality. Having access to credit enables those in lower- and middle-income groups to consume an array of products and services that they otherwise would not be able to afford, thereby taking the edge off discontent. Citizens with...

In this paper, I examine the exchange rate exposure of Hungarian enterprises from a financial stability perspective. In connection with the recent growth in FX loans to enterprises, the central bank assesses the vulnerability of the banks' loan portfolio to changes in the exchange rate. To...

Credit to the private sector has been growing very rapidly in a number of Central and Eastern European countries in recent years. The main question is whether this dynamics is an equilibrium convergence process or may rather pose stability risks. Using panel econometric techniques, this paper...

El actual contexto se caracteriza por restricciones en el acceso al crédito, aún habiendo fondos disponibles en tal sentido. Las pequeñas y medianas empresas necesitan del crédito para sostener inversiones en activos fijos y de trabajo y generar empleo, pero se les dificulta obtenerlo por...

The paper provides evidence on what affects at the margin the cost and availability of bank credit for firms in Argentina. We study in particular how banks use different pieces of private and public information to screen firms and overcome informational asymmetries in the credit market. Some...

In this paper we examine whether absorptive capacity can constitute sufficient justification for rejecting the proposal of a large aid increase to support the ‘big push’. We argue that the probability of a poverty trap exists for many countries, in particular the least developed countries...

Strong lending relationships between banks and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in the bank-based financial system of Germany. So far, they have been mainly described by the notion of a housebank and transactional features of long-term bank-customer relationships. In...

The goal of this paper is to provide up-to-date worldwide evidence on the short-term relationship between credit changes and output changes. Standard correlation methods, stateof-the-art panel Granger causality tests, and panel regressions were applied on a maximum sample of 144 countries over...

We suggest that foreign banks may represent a trade-off for their developing country hosts. A portfolio model is developed to show that a more diversified international bank may be one of lower, overall risk and less susceptible to funding shocks but may react more to shocks that affect expected...

A recent survey has shown that the major problem faced by firms in Latin American countries is difficulty in accessing financial markets. Figure 1 summarizes the findings of the Business Environment Survey on obstacles faced by firms.