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An audit study was conducted in Ghana, Mexico and Peru to understand the quality of financial information and products offered to low-income customers. Trained auditors visited multiple financial institutions, seeking credit and savings products. Consistent with Gabaix and Laibson (2006), staff only provides information about the cost when asked, disclosing less than a third of the total cost voluntarily. In fact, the cost disclosed voluntarily is uncorrelated with the expensiveness of the product. In addition, clients are rarely offered the cheapest product, most likely because staff is incentivized to offer more expensive and thus more profitable products to the institution. This suggests that clients are not provided enough information to be able to compare among products, and that disclosure and transparency policies may be ineffective because they undermine the commercial interest of financial institutions.

Finance and financial sector development

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This paper focuses on the impact of disasters on public expenditures, and how this impact might be valued. The impact may involve changes in the composition of spending, concurrently and over time. It may also involve changes in the level of spending and the profile of this over time. In the latter case, the associated financing must also be taken into account. The changes of interest are those that would take place under a given sovereign disaster risk financing and insurance strategy, as opposed to what would take place otherwise. The paper concludes with some suggestions toward an operational framework for addressing these questions.

Environment --- Finance and Financial Sector Development

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This note discusses the current structure of the financial sector in Sao Tome and Principe (STP) and the main obstacles preventing mobilization and allocation of more resources to private sector investment. Since 2012, credit to the private sector in STP has been declining and is currently below peers. In an economy dominated by informality, banks provide credit to a limited number of borrowers, prioritizing large borrowers. A survey completed in 2017 showed that only 18 percent of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) reported being registered and having a bank account, of which only 3 percent had access to credit. The same survey showed that only 39 percent of individuals, some of them owners of micro-enterprises registered under their personal name, have access to financial services. The note is divided into four sections. The first provides an overview of STP's financial sector, analyzing and benchmarking its structure, depth, and soundness. The second section analyzes the landscape of access to financial services (focusing on individuals and MSMEs), while the third describes some of the key limitations of the financial infrastructure in STP that create obstacles to financial sector development and access to finance. Finally, the fourth section concludes with policy recommendations that can help increase access to financial services in STP.

Financial Sector --- Financial Services --- Private Investment

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This paper uses a large scale field experiment in India to study attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive constraints that stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes. The study complements financial education with (i) participant classroom motivation with pay for performance on a knowledge test, (ii) intensity of treatment with personalized financial counseling, and (iii) behavioral nudges with financial goal setting. The analysis finds no impact of pay for performance but significant effects of both counseling and goal setting on real financial outcomes. These results identify important complements to financial education that can bridge the gap between financial knowledge and financial behavior change.

Education --- Finance and Financial Sector Development

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Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain entered a period of severe economic and financial stress in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Their collective experience confirmed the primacy of total debt, private or public, in affecting the onset of, depth of, and recovery from economic crises. The year 2010 and the years following have demonstrated the ways in which policy responses to crisis-related downturns must be adapted when major international partners experience simultaneous growth slowdowns and markets exhibit increased risk aversion. This paper compares the recovery experience of these countries in light of recent policy debates and research on the impact of macroeconomic and structural reforms. It highlights that (a) the quality of the policies adopted to stabilize economies in the short run affects growth recovery in the long run; and (b) macroeconomic policies (fiscal and monetary) are most effective in supporting growth when they take into account structural differences between countries and when policies complement each other. The country experiences indicate that a holistic view of factors affecting investment, exports, and employment is needed to understand the impact of macroeconomic and structural reforms on output. In the absence of such a holistic view, policy may neglect to influence the binding constraints to growth.

Debt --- Financial Sector --- Jobs --- Structural Policies --- Trade