Subtopics

FPD Impact Evaluations
Summarizes some of our existing and ongoing impact evaluations in the areas of finance and private sector development.

• Microenterprises
  Collects new panel data on microenterprises; Estimates the returns to capital; measures the level of entrepreneurship; considers links between microenterprise recovery from disasters and capital constraints; researches constraints on growth of these firms.
  

Household Financial Access
Summarizes the on-going research on developing household survey questionaires to measure access to finnancial services and evaluating the impact of such access.

Remittances
Remittances, funds received from migrants working abroad, have become the second largest source of external finance for developing countries after foreign direct investment, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of GDP. This project uses balance of payments and household survey based data to investigate the impact of remittances on financial development.

Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is a critical part of the process of economic development and growth and important for the continued dynamism of the modern economy.

Financial Institutions and Regulation

• Bank Regulation and Supervision
  Presents the first comprehensive cross-country survey of how banks are regulated and supervised, including requirements and regulatory powers regarding bank entry, ownership, capital, powers and activities, auditing, organization, liquidity, provisioning, accounting and disclosure, incentives for supervisors, deposit insurance, and disciplining powers including bank exit. 
• Foreign Bank Entry
  Focuses on questions related to foreign bank entry in developing countries, including what draws foreign banks to a country, which banks expand abroad, what foreign banks do once they arrive, and how mode of entry and organizational form affect foreign bank behavior. 

Access to Finance

• Access to Finance
  Analyzes a broad range of issues related to access to finance in countries at different levels of financial development.
• Microfinance
  Uses accounting data from leading microfinance institutions (MFIs) to investigate the trade-offs MFIs face and the policies that may improve their performance and outreach to the poor. In addition, the impact of new financial products is evaluated using field experiments. 

• Small and Medium Enterprises: Overcoming Growth Constraints
  Studies how firm size is determined, whether SMEs have an important impact on growth and poverty alleviation; examines the extent to which SMEs face higher growth constraints and which policies/future trends are likely to affect these constraints; and attempts to make the existing lending to SMEs more effective.

Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress
Uses country- and firm-level datasets of firms in financial distress to better understand how country and institutional characteristics affect the way that financial institutions and commercial creditors confront financial distress, and the firm-level characteristics that affect resolution.

Financial Crises
Studies the determinants and resolution policies of financial crises, with a focus on strategies/policies that help detect crises early and resolve them effectively with limited cost to government and overall economic repercussions. 

Developing Indicators of Access to Financial Services
Develops banking sector outreach indicators, examines what determines outreach, and how outreach affects development outcomes, using cross-country bank regulator data and information from bank-level surveys.

Financial Structures – Bank-based vs. market-based financial system
What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of bank-based financial systems and market-based financial systems?

Firm Informality
Collects new data on formal and informal enterprises; Studies the dynamics of the informal sector and constraints to the growth and formalization of small firms; examines the degree of interaction between the formal and informal sector.