Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) play a significant role in the Indonesian economy, however most MSMEs have difficulties in accessing finance. The Credit Guarantee Scheme (CGS) is a popular program for guaranteeing bank lending to MSMEs by the government. The objective of this...

The paper examines the determinants of financial inclusion by specially accounting for the role of institutions in a panel of eighteen (18) sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries using a dynamic system of Generalized Method of Moments (SYS-GMM). The emanated findings consistently stress the...

We design a field experiment to study gender differences in misconduct, a significant yet poorly understood issue. We construct a census of the market for mobile banking in rural Ghanaian villages, and using actual transactional audits estimate that 1 out of every 5 mobile money transactions is...

We investigate whether the use of mobile money can help individuals build savings to face predictable and unpredictable life events. Studying the case of Burkina Faso, we use hand-collected data from individual responses to a survey we designed and conducted between May and June 2014. Our main...

This paper examines whether mobile money adoption can induce informal firms to formalize, an aspect that has been overlooked in the empirical literature. Despite several regulatory reforms such as simplifying tax systems and reducing the costs and time needed to register a business, informality...

Identifying the nexus between financial inclusion of households and social unrest in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru in 2021 we put emphasis on how far it drives economic and financial instability. Insofar we tested financial inclusion with regard to the quality, depth and welfare effects of the...

Technology is profoundly reshaping international and domestic monetary and payment systems. Catalysts include the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, the announcement of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency proposal and China’s announcement of its Digital Yuan, both in 2019, and COVID-19 in 2020. The...

This paper synthesizes four lessons from the experiences of six Asian e-money schemes for central banks as they consider adopting central bank digital currency (CBDC): (i) CBDC should embody four attributes: trust, convenience, efficiency, and security; (ii) CBDC service providers can facilitate...

The COVID-19 crisis created conditions for digital finance to accelerate financial inclusion in the Philippines. Anecdotal and survey data suggest that the pandemic has indeed spurred large gains in financial inclusion in the country, with adoption of digital finance as a strong driver. This...