Demirguc-Kunt, Asli

Person:
Demirguc-Kunt, Asli

Author Name Variants

Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli, Demirgüç-Kunt, Aslı

Fields of Specialization

Financial Sector Development, Private Sector Development, Jobs and Development

External Links

All About Finance Blog
RePEc

Last updated:December 19, 2023

Biography

Asli Demirgüç-Kunt was the Chief Economist of the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. Over her 30-year career in the World Bank, she has also served as the Director of Research, Director of Development Policy, and the Chief Economist of the Finance and Private Sector Development Network, conducting research and advising on financial and private sector development issues. The author of over 100 publications, she has published widely in academic journals and is among the most-cited researchers in the world. Her research has focused on the links between financial development, firm performance, and economic development. Banking and financial crises, financial regulation, access to financial services and inclusion, as well as SME finance and entrepreneurship are among her areas of research. She has also created the Global Financial Development Report series and Global Findex financial inclusion database. She has been the President of the International Atlantic Economic Society (2013-14) and Director of the Western Economic Association (2015-18) and serves on the editorial boards of professional journals. Prior to coming to the Bank, she was an Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from Ohio State University.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing1 - 10 of 150

The Global Findex Database 2021: Financial Inclusion, Digital Payments, and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-06-29) Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Ansar, Saniya; Klapper, Leora; Singer, Dorothe
The fourth edition of the Global Findex offers a lens into how people accessed and used financial services during the COVID-19 pandemic, when mobility restrictions and health policies drove increased demand for digital services of all kinds. The Global Findex is the world’s most comprehensive database on financial inclusion. It is also the only global demand-side data source allowing for global and regional cross-country analysis to provide a rigorous and multidimensional picture of how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage financial risks. Global Findex 2021 data were collected from national representative surveys of about 128,000 adults in more than 120 economies. The latest edition follows the 2011, 2014, and 2017 editions, and it includes a number of new series measuring financial health and resilience and contains more granular data on digital payment adoption, including merchant and government payments. The Global Findex is an indispensable resource for financial service practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and development professionals.
Government Support and Firm Performance during COVID-19
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-12-19) Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Singer, Dorothe; Bruhn, Miriam
This paper assesses the medium-run effects of government support to firms during the COVID-19 crisis and whether the effectiveness of this support varied with its timing. Using data from three rounds of the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys COVID-19 Follow-up Surveys carried out between May 2020 and April 2022, it relates government support in Round 1 (received in the first half of 2020) and Round 2 (received during the second half of 2020 or early 2021) with firm performance in Round 3 (generally mid-2021). Controlling for a host of background characteristics, firms that received support in Round 1 performed better in terms of Round 3 sales, but only if they did not have continued support. Firms that also received support in Round 2 had similar Round 3 sales as those that received no support and were more likely to decrease employment. Firms that received government support only in Round 2 experienced no boost in Round 3 performance. The findings suggest that government support should be provided promptly, but it should also be phased out quickly.
Bank Capital Regulation and Risk after the Global Financial Crisis
(Elsevier, 2021-05-17) Anginer, Deniz; Bertay, Ata Can; Cull, Robert; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Mare, Davide S.
We explore and summarize the evolution in bank capital regulations and bank risk after the global financial crisis. Using a new survey of bank regulation and supervision covering more than 120 economies, we show that regulatory capital increased, but some elements of capital regulations became laxer. Analyzing bank-level data, we also document the importance of defining bank regulatory capital narrowly as the quality of capital matters in reducing bank risk. This is particularly true for banks that have more discretion in the computation of regulatory capital ratios and are subject to weaker market monitoring.
Global Bank Lending under Climate Policy
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-12) Pedraza, Alvaro; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Pulga, Fredy; Ruiz-Ortega, Claudia
What is the response of bank foreign subsidiaries to climate policy in their host countries This paper finds that global banks with high environmental performance increase their presence in countries after local authorities strengthen their climate-related actions. Through their foreign subsidiaries, these banks expand their credit by 4.6 percent following an increase of one-standard deviation in the host country’s climate policy index. Importantly, the paper does not find evidence that banks with low environmental scores exit in response to climate initiatives. The findings show that strengthening climate policy might be a win-win strategy for policymakers—in addition to addressing carbon emission reduction, climate-related initiatives also appear to attract foreign capital from lenders with strong preferences for green assets.
Banking Research in the Time of COVID-19
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09) Berger, Allen N.; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli
Despite the devastating worldwide human and economic tolls of the COVID-19 crisis, it has created some positive economic and financial surprises and opportunities for research. This paper highlights two such favorable surprises —the shortest U.S. recession on record and the avoidance of any banking crisis—and a number of research opportunities. The paper ties the “economic surprise” of the short recession to the speed and size of U.S. stimulus programs during COVID-19—faster and larger than for the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It connects the “financial surprise” of the resilient banking sector to prudential policies put in place during and after the GFC that fortified U.S. banks prior to COVID-19. These twin “surprises” are also mutually reinforcing—if either the economy or banking system had failed, so would the other. The paper also reviews extant COVID-19 banking research and suggests paths for future research. It recommends that particular attention be paid to research outside of the U.S.—where fewer favorable “surprises” may be present—as the best way to advance knowledge in this area.
Protect Incomes or Protect Jobs? The Role of Social Policies in Post-Pandemic Recovery
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09) Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli; Lokshin, Michael; Torre, Iván
This paper examines the effectiveness of income protection and job protection policies for the post-pandemic economic recovery of the second half of 2020 through 2021. The paper is based on a new data set of the budgets of social protection programs implemented as a part of the pandemic stimulus package in 154 countries. The empirical analysis shows that, in the short run, higher expenditure on job protection measures is associated with more robust gross domestic product growth, increased employment, and decreased inactivity and poverty rates compared to the expansion of income protection programs. Both policies had a significant economic impact only in countries with weaker pre-pandemic social insurance systems. In countries with broader coverage of the social insurance system, the income and job protection programs appear to have had a limited impact on post-pandemic recovery. Because the structural economic changes induced by the pandemic are expected to materialize fully in several years, more research is needed to understand the longer-term effects of job protection and income protection policies on labor markets and economic recovery.
Measuring Human Capital in Middle Income Countries
(Elsevier, 2022-12) Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli; Torre, Iván
This paper develops an indicator that measures the level of human capital to address the specific education and health challenges faced by middle income countries. We apply this indicator to countries in Europe and Central Asia, where productive employment requires skills that are more prevalent among higher education graduates, and where good health is associated to low levels of adult health risk factors. The Europe and Central Asia Human Capital Index (ECA-HCI) extends the World Bank's Human Capital Index by adding a measure of quality-adjusted years of higher education to the original education component, and it includes the prevalence of three adult health risk factors—obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking—as an additional proxy for latent health status. The results show that children born today in the average country in Europe and Central Asia will be almost half as productive as they would have had they reached the benchmark of complete education and full health. Countries with good basic education outcomes do not necessarily have good higher education outcomes, and high prevalence of adult health risk factors can offset good education indicators. This extension of the Human Capital Index could also be useful for assessing the state of human capital in middle-income countries in general.
Effects of Public Sector Wages on Corruption: Wage Inequality Matters
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04) Kolchin, Vladimir; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Lokshin, Michael
The paper uses a new country-level, panel data set to study the effect of public sector wages on corruption. The results show that wage inequality in the public sector is an important determinant of the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies. Increasing the wages of public officials could help reduce corruption in countries with low public sector wage inequality. In countries where public sector wages are highly unequal, however, raising the wages of government employees could increase corruption. These results are robust to a wide range of empirical model specifications, estimation methods, and distributional assumptions. The relation persists when controlling for latent omitted variables, using the share of contracts in the private sector as an instrument for the public-private wage differential. Combining increases in public sector wages with policies affecting the wage distribution could help policy makers design cost-effective programs to reduce corruption in their countries.
Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-04-19) Singer, Dorothe; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Ansar, Saniya; Klapper, Leora; Hess, Jake
The Global Findex database is the world's most comprehensive set of data on how people make payments, save money, borrow and manage risk. Launched in 2011, it includes more than 100 financial inclusion indicators in a format allowing users to compare access to financial services among adults worldwide -- including by gender, age and household income. This third edition of the database was compiled in 2017 using nationally representative surveys in more than 140 developing and high-income countries. The database includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It features additional data on Fintech and digital financial services, including the use of mobile phones and internet technology to conduct financial transactions. Global Findex data is utilized to track progress toward the World Bank's goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. The data also is a source for the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators and a benchmark for policymakers seeking to expand access to and use of financial services. Lastly, this report discusses opportunities to expand access to financial services among the unbanked, and ways to promote greater use of digital financial services among the underbanked.
Competition and Firm Recovery Post-COVID-19
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11) Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Singer, Dorothe; Bruhn, Miriam
This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the reallocation of economic activity across firms, and whether this reallocation depends on the competition environment. The paper uses the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys COVID-19 Follow-up Surveys for about 8,000 firms in 23 emerging and developing countries in Europe and Central Asia, matched with 2019 Enterprise Surveys data. It finds that during the COVID-19 crisis, economic activity was reallocated toward firms with higher pre-crisis labor productivity. Countries with a strong competition environment experienced more reallocation from less productive to more productive firms than countries with a weak competition environment. The evidence also suggests that reallocation from low- to high-productivity firms during the COVID-19 crisis was stronger compared with pre-crisis times. Finally, the analysis shows that government support measures implemented in response to the crisis may have adverse effects on competition and productivity growth since support went to less productive and larger firms, regardless of their pre-crisis innovation.