Leora Klapper's blog

The facts are in. 50 percent of adults worldwide have an account at a formal financial institution. 21 percent of women save using a formal account. 16 percent of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa use mobile money. These are just a few of the thousands of data points now available in the Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) database, the first of its kind to measure people’s use of financial products across economies and over time.

Thankfully, researchers and policymakers no longer have to rely on a patchwork of incompatible household surveys and aggregated central bank data for a comprehensive view of the financial inclusion landscape. The publically  accessible Global Findex provides comparable individual-level data that facilitate detailed analyses of how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk in 148 economies. The data are based on more than 150,000 interviews with adults representing over 97 percent of the world’s population and was carried by Gallup Inc. as a component of its 2011 World Poll.

As most manufacturers around the world can attest, trade credit is an important source of external financing for firms of all sizes. Suppliers—some of whom may be small or credit constrained—generally offer working capital financing to their buyers, reported as accounts receivables (e.g. McMillan and Woodruff, 1999). Research has also demonstrated that trade credit can act as a substitute for bank credit during periods of monetary tightening or financial crisis (see, for example, Love et al., 2007).

Trade credit, however, is not used for financing purposes alone. Trade credit, it has been argued, is a way for a supplier to engage in price discrimination, giving favored or more powerful clients longer terms (see, for example, Giannetti, Burkart, and Ellingsen, 2011). Furthermore, trade credit may simply be customary in an industry, with this particular custom driven by economic rationales such as allowing buyers time to assess the quality of the supplied goods (Lee and Stowe, 1993).

How inclusive are financial systems around the world? What proportion of the population uses which financial services? Despite all the work we have done so far, most of the figures cited by experts in this field are still just estimates (see, for example, here and here). But this is about to change—in a big way.

To help us understand the scope and breadth of financial activity by individuals around the world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced an $11 million, 10-year grant to the World Bank’s Development Research Group to build a new publicly accessible database of Global Financial Inclusion Indicators. The ultimate goal of the project is to improve access to finance; achieving this goal requires reliably measuring financial inclusion in a consistent manner over a broad range of countries and over time to provide a solid foundation of data for researchers and policymakers. We will carry out three rounds of data collection, starting with Gallup, Inc’s 2011 Gallup World Poll, which will survey at least 1,000 people per country in 150 countries about their access and use of financial services.

The 2008 financial crisis precipitated a global economic downturn, credit crunch, and reduction in cross-border lending, trade finance, remittances, and foreign direct investment, which all adversely affected businesses around the world. The increase in the number of distressed firms has made policymakers more concerned about the effectiveness of existing bankruptcy regimes, including both the laws that address reorganization and liquidation, as well as improved enforcement of laws in court.

In a recent paper with Elena Cirmizi and Mahesh Uttamchandani, my co-authors and I summarize the theoretical and empirical literature on designing bankruptcy laws; discuss the challenges of introducing and implementing bankruptcy reforms; and present examples of the most recent reforms in this area from around the world. As policymakers use the current recession as an opportunity to engage in meaningful reform of the bankruptcy process, it is important to assess experiences from previous crises.

With millions around the globe feeling the impact of the financial crisis and slower economic growth and job losses, it is important to understand regulatory and policy constraints on entrepreneurs wanting to start a formal business. Entrepreneurial activity is the basis of sustainable economic growth, and the first step for entrepreneurs joining or transitioning to the formal sector is the registration of their business at the registrar of companies. For evidence of the economic power of entrepreneurship we need look no further than the United States, where young firms have been shown to be an important source of net job creation, relative to incumbent firms (Haltiwanger, et al.).

To measure entrepreneurial activity, we’ve constructed with support from the Kauffman Foundation the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Snapshots (WBGES) – a cross-country, time-series dataset on new firm registration in 112 countries. The main variable of interest is “Entry Density”, defined as the number of newly registered limited liability firms as a percentage of the working age population (in thousands). We employ annual figures from 2004 to 2009 collected directly from Registrars of Companies and other government statistical offices worldwide. Like the Doing Business report, the units of measurement are private, formal sector companies with limited liability.

It is well established that financial development is necessary for the efficient allocation of capital and firm growth, yet firm-level surveys have repeatedly found access to finance to be among the biggest hurdles to starting and growing a new business. For instance, in the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys standardized dataset for 2006-2009, 31% of firm owners around the world report access to finance as a major constraint to current operations of the firm, while this figure is 40% for firms under three years of age.

In a recent paper with Larry Chavis and Inessa Love we address two types of questions: (1) What is the relationship between firm age and sources of external financing? and (2) Is there a differential impact of the business environment on access to financing by young versus old firms? 

To summarize, we find systematic differences in the use of different financing sources for new and older firms. We find that in all countries younger firms rely less on bank financing and more on informal financing. However, we also find that young firms have relatively better access to bank finance in countries with stronger rule of law and better credit information and that the reliance of young firms on informal finance decreases with the availability of credit information.