Despite the large potential gains from credit by second-tier development banks, little is known about the actual impact of these banks' lending activity. This study partially fills that gap by analyzing the impact of the lending activity of Bancoldex, the Colombian second-tier development bank,...

Government-owned development banks have often been justified by the need to respond to financial market imperfections that hinder the establishment and growth of promising businesses, and as a result, stifle economic development more generally. However, evidence on the effectiveness of these...

This paper presents a retrospective review of several key areas of work of the Capital Markets and Financial Institutions Division (CMF) of the Inter-American Development Bank. Presented with each chapter as an independent piece, the paper analyzes the operations portfolio of CMF from 2006 to...

This paper assesses the impact of a cluster development policy in Latin America. A Local Productive Arrangement (APL) is a cluster of firms within the same territory, operating around the same activity and maintaining ties of cooperation and learning among themselves and with other stakeholders....

This paper evaluates the impact of the Argentine SME support program PRE on employment, real wages, and exports. The program aimed at increasing the competitiveness of SMEs by co-financing up to fifty percent of expenditures in professional services and technical assistance. We use a unique...

This paper studies the effect of government-backed partial credit guarantees on firms’ performance. These guarantees are automatically granted to firms without enough collateral in order to lift their credit constraints. We put together a panel, covering the period 1997-2007, that combines...

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) have been successful in providing credit to millions of low-income borrowers in groups previously excluded from formal financial services, but they often charge interest rates that many claim are excessive. We examine microfinance interest rates and their...

Two crucial problems when research agencies or donors need to asses empirically the microfinance/children education nexus on already operating organizations are lack of availability of panel data and selection bias. We propose an original approach which tackles these problems by combining...

Touted as the largest public works program in the world, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) was enacted in 2005 with the goal of curtailing rural poverty in India. To ensure gender diversity in program participation, the Indian Government set a target to allocate a third of...

Financial constraints affect firms’ financial and productive decisions generating substantial macroeconomic implications in terms of investment, economic growth, inflation and income distribution. Despite its relevance, financial constraints are not directly observable. However, empirically...