"Financial sector development fosters economic growth and reduces poverty by widening and broadening access to finance and allocating society's savings more efficiently. The author first discusses three pillars on which sound and efficient financial systems are built: macroeconomic stability and...

Economies with better developed financial sectors have a comparative advantage in manufacturing industries. A two-sector model shows the sector with large scale economies profiting more than the other from a well-developed financial sector. In countries with higher levels of financial...

Germany's private deposit insurance scheme with its "clublike" nature, cannot easily be transplanted to countries with weaker institutions. But it offers useful lessons for countries that want to set up a new scheme or reform an existing one