← Search

Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 85 No. 1 2007

Reaching out: Access to and use of banking services across countries

Thorsten Beck1; Asli Demirgüç-Kunt; Maria Soledad Martinez Peria

1 World Bank

Abstract

This paper is a first attempt at measuring financial sector outreach and investigating its determinants. First, we present new indicators of banking sector outreach across 99 countries, constructed from aggregate data provided by bank regulators. Second, we show that our indicators closely predict harder-to-collect micro-level statistics of household and firm use of banking services, and are associated with measures of firm financing obstacles in the expected way. Finally, we explore the association between our outreach indicators and standard determinants of financial sector depth. We find many similarities but also some differences in the determinants of outreach and depth.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2006.07.002
Volume
85
Issue
1
Pages
234-266
Language
en
Sources
crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex

Cite