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Channel: All About Finance - A blog by Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Director of Research, World Bank
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Financial inclusion in Europe and Central Asia — the way forward?

If you are unbanked there is a high likelihood you are living on the edge of poverty, exclusion and vulnerability. If you struggle to attain or maintain a secure, well-paying job, you probably do not...

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3 Ways to advance usage and drive impact in financial inclusion

Unprecedented technological advancements and corresponding innovations in business models have helped financial inclusion evolve beyond merely connecting people to a bank account. It is, for instance,...

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Zooming out for better clarity: sovereign asset and liability management

The balance sheet of sovereign entities is far more complex than the balance sheet of private companies. For example, the institutions that manage the assets of a sovereign are different than those...

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Borrowing for a rainy day: emergency loans in Bangladesh

Blog post by a student on the job market. Weather shocks are a constant and growing threat to much of the world’s rural population whose livelihoods depend on agriculture (Dercon, 2002). The cost of...

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Who’s afraid of big bad firms?

Superstar firms have been in the minds of world’s leading bankers and economists lately. Policymakers are concerned that America’s leading firms such as the FAANG stocks — Facebook, Apple, Amazon,...

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Can bank capital substitute for supervision and oversight?

Since its inception, bank capital regulation has been a topic of heated discussion and debate. At the international level, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) has emerged as a global...

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Bank credit allocation in Latin America and the Caribbean

The recent economic growth performance of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been hampered by poor productivity growth. While many factors explain the poor productivity and...

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Ten Years after Lehman: Where are we now?

The tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers is a good opportunity for us all to reflect on the global financial crisis and the lessons we have learned from it. By now, there is widespread...

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Sowing the seeds for rural finance: The impact of support services for credit...

Low and volatile agricultural incomes, poor connectivity, low population density and limited information are just a few reasons that have kept commercial banks away of rural areas in developing...

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Solving Africa’s currency illiquidity problem

Some 41 currencies serve the African continent. Many of these are characterised by their illiquid and rarely traded status on the global financial market, as well as their volatility. So for those...

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Benchmarking costs of financial intermediation around the world

Bank financial intermediation plays a critical role in sustainable and inclusive growth. There is a considerable body of evidence showing that the extent to which an economy is making use of banking...

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Moving from financial access to health

Over the past decade, the push for financial inclusion has united governments, companies, technology entrepreneurs, and nonprofit organizations in dozens of countries on every continent — and with...

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The political economy of bank lending: evidence from an emerging market

Our paper studies the existence of political rents in bank lending in Mexico. Unlike prior studies examining political rent seeking in public sector banks, we focus on an economy with a fully...

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Leveraging urbanization to fund sustainable development and financial inclusion

Urbanization, when combined with innovations in payments technologies (virtual and complementary currencies), provides an opportunity to finance sustainable city development funds and achieve...

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Do securities trading by banks crowd out lending to the real sector?

In “Securities Trading by Banks and Credit Supply: Micro-Evidence”, we explore the effects of the financial crisis on securities trading by commercial banks and the subsequent effect of the latter in...

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The impact of the global financial crisis on the use of long-term finance

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, there were heightened concerns that a reduced availability of long-term finance and the resulting rollover risks would adversely affect the performance...

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Eighteenth annual international banking conference: The future of large,...

On November 5–6, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted its annual International Banking Conference, which we at the Bank co-sponsored. This year’s topic “The Future of Large, Internationally...

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The determinants of long-term versus short-term bank credit in EU countries

In a new background paper prepared for the 2015/2016 Global Financial Development Report on Long-Term Finance, Haelim Park, Thierry Tressel and Claudia Ruiz analyze the growth of bank credit to firms...

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Launching the 2014 Global Findex microdata

I am pleased to announce the release of the 2014 Global Findex microdata, which includes individual-level responses from almost 150,000 adults around the world. You can download it all here. Drawing...

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Which financial intermediaries provide long-term finance?

This post is part of a series highlighting the key findings of the Global Financial Development Report 2015 | 2016: Long-Term Finance. You can view the entire series at gfdr2015. Policy makers debate...

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