Regulation allows microfinance institutions to take deposits and expand their banking functions, but complying with regulation can be costly. We examine implications for institutions' profitability and their outreach to small-scale borrowers and women, using a newly-constructed dataset on 245...

Does related lending have positive or negative effects on the development of banking systems? We analyze a unique cross-country data set covering 74 countries from 1990 to 2007, and find that related lending, on average, does not have any effect on the growth of credit. We do find, however, that...

Profitability improvements after the privatization of a large state-owned bank might come at the expense of reduced access to financial services for some groups, especially the rural poor. The privatization of Tanzania's National Bank of Commerce provides a unique episode for studying this...

Using a large panel dataset of Chinese industrial firms, we find that poorly performing SOEs were more likely to redistribute credit to firms with less privileged access to loans via trade credit. While that could be consistent with the efficient redistribution of credit, it is more likely that...

Evidence based on firm-level data from 89 countries with updated country-level data on financial structure suggests that in low-income countries; labor growth is more rapid in countries with a higher level of private credit/GDP. This positive relationship with private credit is especially...

This paper uses a randomized controlled trial to study the effects of access to agent banking. Individuals were encouraged to open an account and transact at a banking agent or a branch of a financial institution. Compared with individuals who were sent to the branch, individuals sent to an...