The authors examine the relationship between foreign investment and the attributes of emerging market countries and firms in which investment is made. Their findings indicate that countries with higher levels of economic development and floating exchange rate regimes tend to have greater ability...

Factoring is a form of asset-based finance where the credit is extended based on the value of the borrower's accounts receivable. In recent years factoring has experienced phenomenal growth and has become an important source of financing-especially short-term working capital-for small and...

The authors jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. They argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model."Nonrobustness"checks (which purposely exclude some...

The widespread financial crisis in East Asia caused large economic shocks, which varied by degree across the region. That crisis provides a unique opportunity for investigating the factors that determine the use of bankruptcy processes in a number of economies. The authors study the use of...

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk-assessment and lending decisions. The paper first shows that, while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable lending, their power is...

Given their widespread presence in rural and poor areas, post offices can play a leading role in advancing financial inclusion. Yet little is known about the type of clients that post offices reach through their financial service offerings as compared with clients of traditional financial...

This paper investigates the impact of political instability and civil conflict on firms. It studies the unrest in Cote d'Ivoire that began in 2000, using a census of all registered firms for the years 1998-2003. The analysis uses structural estimates of the production function and exploits...

This paper compares the raising of external equity capital from private equity investors via private investments in public equity (PIPEs) and seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) using a sample of 456 PIPEs and 1,910 SEOs drawn from nine Asian countries. Consistent with the idea that insiders...