Working Paper
The financial inclusion agenda
Using a unique district-level panel dataset, we investigate the effect of banking system penetration on financial inclusion in Ghana. To purge potential endogeneity bias in the underlying relationship, we exploit a change in the policy environment of...
Blog
Making Finance the Servant not the Master
Tony Addison Today, there is much frustration with the financial sector. Society’s precious savings are not being put to the best of uses—investing...
Working Paper
Understanding the Relationship between Institutions and Economic Development
The paper tries to improve our understanding on the role of institutions in development by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions and highlighting some of its key problems. After discussing some definitional problems, the...
Working Paper
The Effects of (within and with EU) Regional Integration
We analyse two potential effects arising from regional (and with EU) integration—increased quality of institutions (including the quality of financial institutions) and, economic policies and reduced multilateral exchange rate volatility—in a...
Working Paper
Education, Financial Institutions, Inflation and Growth
Our paper investigates the unexplored impact of education on inflation and of this relationship on economic growth. By using a sample of 102 countries observed on non-overlapping five-year data spells over the period 1963-2001, we find that average...
Working Paper
Financial Sector Development and Productivity Growth
Recent years have witnessed important structural changes around the world as a result of the globalization process, the creation of new economic blocks and the liberalization of financial sector in many countries. Responding to these changes many...
Working Paper
Efficiency of Commercial Banks in Sub-Saharan Africa
Utilizing the stochastic frontier approach, this study conducts a comparative analysis of profit efficiency and cost inefficiency of commercial banks operating in 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries by bank ownership (domestic bank, SSA foreign...
Blog
Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial Development: Looking at the MDGs from a Different Angle?
by
George Mavrotas
January 2009
George Mavrotas While recent years have witnessed new interest in the finance–growth nexus, the relationship between domestic resource mobilization...
Journal Special Issue
Impact of the Liberalization of the Exchange Rate and Financial Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa
This special issue of the Journal of International Development presents the results of a study initiated two years ago by UNU/WIDER on `The impact of the liberalization of the exchange rate and financial markets in sub-Saharan Africa'. The project...
Policy Brief
Stranger than Fiction? Understanding Institutional Changes and Economic Development
The volume Institutional Change and Economic Development fills some important gaps in our understanding of the relationship between institutional changes and economic development. It does so by developing new discourses on the 'technology of...
Working Paper
Impact of Income and Non-Income Shocks on Child Labour
This paper investigates the impact of income and non-income shocks on child labour using a model in which the household maximizes utility from consumption as well as human capital development of the child. Two types of shocks are considered...
Working Paper
The Banking System and Monetary Aggregates Following Financial Sector Reforms
This paper discusses the process, problems and impacts of the financial sector reform in Indonesia, particularly since the late 1980s. The reform has encouraged a surge in private sector capital inflows to supplement the already high domestic savings...
Working Paper
Prudential Regulation of Banks in Less Developed Economies
Beginning with an empirical analysis of banking crises using a logit econometric model covering a sample of developed and developing countries between 1980-97, the paper suggests that crises are more likely in years of low growth and high real...
Working Paper
Will the Euro Trigger More Monetary Unions in Africa?
We analyse the prospects for greater monetary integration in Africa, in the wake of EMU. We argue that the structural characteristics of African economies are quite different to the EMU members but that much can be gained from monetary cooperation...
Working Paper
Financial Markets and Governments
A survey of the changing relationship between the market for political services and the market for financial services.
Working Paper
Financial Development and Income Inequality in Rural China 1991-2000
Financial development can exert a significant influence on the distribution of income. In this paper, using Chinese provincial data over the period of 1991-2000 and applying the generalized method of moment (GMM) techniques, we investigate the...
Working Paper
Institutional Analysis of Financial Market Fragmentation in Sub-Saharan Africa
The paper examines the source of financial market fragmentation in sub-Saharan Africa in the framework of institutional economics. Based on fieldwork data from Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania, it analyses financial risk management, the...
Working Paper
Financial Sector Development and Growth
This paper documents the financial and institutional developments of China during the past two decades, when China was successfully transformed from a rigid central-planning economy to a dynamic market economy following its unique path. We...
Working Paper
Postconflict Countries
This paper reviews the challenges and experiences in rebuilding fiscal institutions in postconflict environments, based on advice from the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department to selected countries. The recommended strategy involved a three-step process...
Working Paper
Why Isn't There More Financial Intermediation in Developing Countries?
This paper proposes to organize thinking about the opportunities for improving and extending financial markets and safety nets for the poor, by focusing on factors that may explain why the linkage of local financial networks and safety nets with the...
Working Paper
Finance and Growth
This study is an attempt towards an integration of financial development and its effect on the real sector via the transmission mechanism with special reference to developing and emerging market economies. It finds two cointegrating relations between...
Working Paper
Financial Regulation and Supervision in Emerging Markets
The paper deals with changes in the regulation and supervision of the Latin American financial sector in the aftermath of the ‘Tequila Crisis’ of 1994–95. While it finds that both have improved, regulation and supervision cannot resolve all problems...
Working Paper
By How Much Does Conflict Reduce Financial Development?
Financial development is vulnerable to social conflict. Conflict reduces the demand for domestic currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Conflict also leads to poor quality governance, including weak regulation of the financial system...
Journal Article
Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets
Poor rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial risks, which they handle with risk-management and risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance through savings and informal insurance mechanisms. Despite these mechanisms...
Journal Article
Prudential Regulation of Banks in Less Developed Economies
This article argues that developing countries face inherent obstacles in setting up efficient financial regulation, and building up a sound banking sector: the presence of multiple tasks and multiple principals, poor institutions, lack of economies...
Blog
Standards, Codes and Pension Flows
by
Helmut Reisen
2002
by Helmut Reisen The case for mutual benefits arising from the global diversification of portfolios holds well for funded retirement savings. While...
Blog
Conflict and Financial Reconstruction
by Tony Addison The last ten years or so have seen 56 major armed conflicts in 44 different locations, most of them civil wars. Different types of...
Book
Financial Development, Institutions, Growth and Poverty Reduction
This volume explores the various linkages between financial development, institutions, growth and poverty reduction in low-income and transition countries. It is the result of a two-year research project undertaken by UNU-WIDER, and the strong range...
Book
Insurance Against Poverty
Poor people in developing countries are often affected by droughts, floods, illness, crop failure, job loss, and economic downturns. Much of their energy goes into coping with these shocks and into day-to-day survival. While insurance and credit...
Working Paper
Insolvency and Debt Recovery Procedures in Economic Development
Insolvency and debt recovery procedures are as crucial to a well-performing financial sector as credit provision itself. They are even more important in Africa, where attempts are underway to create fully-fledged financial markets. For the financial...
Working Paper
Credit Co-operatives in Locally Financed Economic Development
In most transitional and many developing countries institutions capable of supporting economic development with localized saving-investment cycles have not developed. This crucial gap is in no way addressed by either country-level macro programmes...
Working Paper
The Structure and Performance of Ethiopia's Financial Sector in the Pre- and Post-Reform Period with a Special Focus on Banking
Since 1992 Ethiopia has been engaged in liberalizing its financial sector. The hallmark of the strategy is gradualism. The approach is not without problems especially from Bretton Woods Institutions that saw the reform as a sluggish process. This...
Working Paper
Stock Market Development and Economic Growth
Since the 1990s economists have devoted considerable attention to the study of the relationship between financial markets development and economic growth. In particular, the emergence of stock markets with economic development is an intriguing and...