This paper examines the effect of geographic and industrial diversification on firm value for a sample of 1,914 corporations from 18 countries. Our results indicate that both geographic and product diversification destroy value at high levels of diversification, suggesting that agency and influence costs arising from the increased complexity outweigh the benefits of diversification at high degr...

In attempting to promote bank stability, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (2006) provides a framework that seeks to control the amount of tail risk that large banks take in their trading books. However, banks around the world suffered sizeable trading losses during the recent crisis. Due to the size and prevalence of losses, a formal examination of whether the Basel framework allows b...

Bringing Financial Literacy and Education to Low and Middle Income Countries: The Need to Review, Adjust, and Extend Current Wisdom This paper presents a World Bank led and Russia trust fund financed work program to measure financial capability and the effectiveness of financial education in low and middle income countries. The two activities and their staging have been motivated by the lessons...

As emphasized by Hausmann, Rodrik and Velasco, the policy challenge of boosting growth requires prioritization and identifying what are the most binding constraints. This paper draws on firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, which suggests that the obstacles for the functioning of firms is related to firm size. Recognizing the potential endogeneity and simultaneity between firms...

We estimate firms’ cash flow sensitivity of cash to empirically test how the financial system’s structure and activity level influence their financial constraints. For this purpose we merge Almeida et al. (2004), a path-breaking design for evaluating a firm’s financial constraints, with Levine (2002), who paved the way for comparative analysis of financial systems around the world. We conjectur...

An important question for central banks is how they should report the uncertainty of their forecasts. This paper discusses a way in which a central bank could report the uncertainty of its forecasts in a world in which it used a single macroeconometric model to make its forecasts and guide its policies. Suggestions are then made as to what might be feasible for a central bank to report given th...

â â â  â â  abstract â  the importance of community's health followed by the consideration of endogenous growth models has led to an increase in health expenditure of countries to speed up economic growth and development. this has made the efficiency of health production function to an essential issue especially in developing countries. based upon this, the present study with employing the...

We compare the findings of central bank researchers and academic economists regarding macroeconomic effects quantitative easing (QE). find that papers QE to be more effective than do. Central report larger on output inflation. They also are significant, both statistically economically, they use positive language in abstract. who experience favorable career outcomes. A survey banks reveals subst...

This paper has investigated a possible relationship between credit market structure and bank development in Iran and selected developing countries, using a panel regression analysis. Accordingly, the bank development index is proxied by the allocated credits to private sector, while a dummy variable has been defined as a proxy for credit market. To estimate the regressions, we have used data of...

New monetary literatures widely concentrates on the importance of institutional arrangements in the effectiveness of monetary policy. The debate regarding the optimal institutional design of central banks, independence and conservatism are usually considered to be the most important ingredients for a stable and successful monetary policy. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to deal with the...