Citing crypto-assets’ growing market capitalization and footprint and evolving market structure, institutional investors, including central banks, have been exploring exposures to crypto-assets and reviewing...
Fintech—the application of digital technology to financial services—is reshaping the future of finance. Digital technologies are revolutionizing payments, lending, investment, insurance, and other financial...
Global and domestic factors shape a country’s Fiscal and Monetary Policy Space (FMPS). In response to the COVID-19 crisis, many countries adopted unconventional measures to expand policy space, including...
This report documents the main findings of the Word Bank Group Survey on Digital Transformation and the Future of Finance. The survey was conducted between May 2020 and January 2021 and focused on the...
This note examines the implications of digital innovation for market structure and attendant policies, including financial and competition regulation. There have been several surveys of regulatory responses...
The objectives of this paper are to take stock of the available fintech-related data, to document patterns of fintech activity across the world, and to help identify enabling factors. Fintech has seen...
On-chain crypto-assets transaction volumes have grown rapidly, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Crypto-assets activity appears to be a global phenomenon, although it still remains modest relative...
Reverse stress tests can be a useful tool to evaluate bank resilience to a credit shock, especially in environments where financial data are limited or opaque. This paper develops a simple and transparent...
Local currency bond markets provide a stable source of funding for emerging market sovereigns. A better understanding of the determinants of yields in this market can help improve sovereign debt management...
This paper introduces a new global database and a policy classification framework that records the financial sector policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic across 154 jurisdictions. It documents that...
Since the Global Financial Crisis, Indonesia has experienced persistently higher yields on its domestic local currency government debt relative to peer countries with similar relevant characteristics...
This paper analyzes the main trends and patterns of nominal lending interest rates and lending-deposit interest rate spreads in emerging markets and developing economies. Using data from 140 emerging markets...
Cross-border banking in emerging markets and developing economies has expanded across most World Bank regions and has become large relative to some home and host economies. This paper analyzes recent trends...
This paper conducts a simple stress test to gauge the ability of listed nonfinancial corporates to withstand shocks to earnings and receivables. It targets two basic accounting ratios that capture a firm’s...
This paper examines the macro-financial implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic represents a massive macro-economic demand and supply shock with significant adverse ramifications for global...
This paper examines the interaction between macro-financial and climate-related risks. It brings together different strands of the literature on climate-related risks and how these relate to macro-financial...
This global study seeks to assess how financial technology firms (FinTechs) have been impacted by Covid-19, and how they are responding to the resultant challenges and opportunities. The study is a joint...
This paper explores the sovereign-bank nexus in emerging markets and developing economies: the interconnectedness between the health of the sovereign and the banking system. Data from 140 emerging markets...
In 2009, the G20 embarked on an ambitious financial regulatory reform agenda to address the fault lines that caused the global financial crisis. Although the global benefits are expected to outweigh the...
This paper introduces a novel corporate financial vulnerability index, which tracks financial conditions of the non-financial corporate sector. Using balance-sheet information of 14,207 listed non-financial...