doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/39722

Person:
Singer, Dorothe

Office of the Chief Economist, Europe and Central Asia Region, The World Bank

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Financial Inclusion, Financial Sector Development, Private Sector Development

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Office of the Chief Economist, Europe and Central Asia Region, The World Bank

Last updated: January 9, 2025

Biography

Dorothe Singer is a Senior Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist, Europe and Central Asia Region at the World Bank. Her research focuses on the areas of measuring financial inclusion and the linkages of financial sector and private sector development and the role of institutions. Previously, she was part of the Finance and Private Sector Research Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank where she worked on the Global Findex database, which measures how adults around the world save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 12

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.
Financial Inclusion and Economic Development: A Review of the Data and Evidence
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-09) Ansar, Saniya; Klapper, Leora; Singer, Dorothe
This paper reviews the impact of financial inclusion on economic development outcomes. It highlights the benefits of financial inclusion, including greater savings, improved resilience to economic shocks, and higher levels of economic empowerment, among others. It looks deeper into both the effects of financial inclusion on marginalized groups, like women and the poor, while also examining the impacts of different types of financial instruments, like digital payments and financial accounts. The paper further explores the role that government payment programs and regulatory actions can play in inducing greater financial inclusion, highlighting the need for more policies, products, and incentives to promote greater adoption of financial services for sustainable development.
Financial Deepening and Carbon Emissions Intensity: Evidence from a Global Sample of Countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-16) Fisera, Boris; Melecky, Martin; Singer, Dorothe
Financial deepening contributes to economic development, but its effect on the carbon intensity of production is an open empirical question. If banks finance investments in new, greener technologies, they can contribute to lowering carbon dioxide emissions per unit of output. But if they finance investments in more traditional, carbon-intensive technologies, they can contribute to increasing carbon dioxide emissions per unit of output. This paper studies the impact of financial deepening—an increased provision of bank credit as a share of gross domestic product—on carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of gross domestic product in a global sample of 125 economies from 1990 to 2019. Using a local projections approach, the paper finds that, on average, financial deepening leads to a relative increase in carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of gross domestic product, indicating that financial institutions finance relatively more carbon-intensive investments and consumption. However, a better institutional environment mitigates this adverse effect of financial deepening: conditional local projections reveal that in countries with more environmental regulations, a stronger rule of law, and a financial system that is relatively more market- than bank-based, financial deepening does not lead to higher carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of gross domestic product. Specifically, the results show that countries with an initially lower carbon intensity of production can mitigate the average adverse effect of financial deepening on carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of gross domestic product by improving their general institutional environment proxied by adherence to the rule of law, and, to some extent, by developing their financial markets. By contrast, countries with an initially higher carbon intensity of production are better off focusing on environmental regulations to mitigate the unconditional adverse effect of financial deepening on carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of gross domestic product.
Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Fall 2023: Sluggish Growth, Rising Risks
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-05) Kasyanenko, Sergiy; Izvorski, Ivailo; Singer, Dorothe
Europe and Central Asia continues to be negatively impacted by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, tighter global financial conditions, persistent inflation, and global economic fragmentation. Economic growth in the region is projected to remain weak relative to the long-term trend, delaying the convergence of living standards to those of high-income countries. The impacts of climate change are becoming a serious constraint on growth, as extreme weather events are affecting the region with increased frequency and severity. Economic growth for the emerging market and developing economies of the Europe and Central Asia region has been revised up to 2.4 percent for 2023. The pickup in growth reflects improved forecasts for Ukraine, Central Asia, Türkiye and Russia. Downside risks cloud the outlook. High inflation may persist amid heightened volatility in global commodity markets and a surge in energy prices. Global financial conditions may tighten further. And global growth, already the weakest on record for any five-year period since 1990, may slow further.
Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Spring 2023: Weak Growth, High Inflation, and a Cost-of-Living Crisis
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-06) Roseman Norfleet, Julia Renee; Izvorski, Ivailo; Lokshin, Michael M.; Singer, Dorothe; Torre, Iván
Economic growth slowed sharply last year in Europe and Central Asia, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a surge in inflation, and the sharp tightening of monetary policy and financing conditions hit private consumption, investment, and trade. The marked increase in food and energy prices boosted inflation to a pace not seen in 20 years. The burden of inflation was spread unevenly across households. The poorest households faced inflation that was more than 2 percentage points higher than the inflation faced by the richest households, with this difference exceeding 5 percentage points in some countries. Poverty and inequality rates derived from household-specific inflation rates differ from those based on the standard consumer price index (CPI) approach. These differences have important policy implications, because many programs use CPI–based inflation adjustments, which do not accurately capture changes in the cost of living of targeted populations. Output growth in the region is projected to remain little changed in 2023 but better than projected in January 2023, largely reflecting upgrades to the pace of expansion in Poland, Russia, and Türkiye.
The Importance of Financial Education for the Effective Use of Formal Financial Services
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03) Ansar, Saniya; Klapper, Leora; Singer, Dorothe
This paper examines global data on unbanked and underbanked consumers to highlight the role that improved financial literacy and capability could play in motivating and enabling the safe and beneficial use of financial services. The paper uses data from Global Findex, a demand-side survey on ownership and use of accounts at formal financial institutions. The paper reviews the self-reported barriers to account ownership and use cited by unbanked adults, and identifies the challenges faced by account owners who could not use an account without help. Together, these issues point to the importance of financial education to improve digital and financial literacy skills, in addition to product design that considers customer abilities, and strong consumer safeguards to ensure that customers benefit from financial access.
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.
Financial Inclusion and Inclusive Growth: A Review of Recent Empirical Evidence
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-04) Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Klapper, Leora; Singer, Dorothe
There is growing evidence that appropriate financial services have substantial benefits for consumers, especially women and poor adults. This paper provides an overview of financial inclusion around the world and reviews the recent empirical evidence on how the use of financial products -- such as payments services, savings accounts, loans, and insurance -- can contribute to inclusive growth and economic development. This paper also discusses some of the challenges to achieving greater financial inclusion and directions for future research.
Financial Risk Management in Agriculture: Analyzing Data from a New Module of the Global Findex Database
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) Klapper, Leora; Ansar, Saniya; Hess, Jake; Singer, Dorothe
The ability to manage financial risk is especially important for people earning their living through agriculture. Many farmers only get paid once or twice a year, and households need to stretch their earnings across the year by saving or borrowing money. Moreover, agricultural production faces a variety of risks related to both production and markets because of their exposure to weather and disease shocks. Households engaged in agriculture may thus especially benefit from financial inclusion—access to and use of formal financial services. This paper explores the topic of financial risk management in agriculture—how adults who rely on growing crops or raising livestock as their household's main source of income manage financial risk and use financial services. The paper summarizes new data based on a nationally representative survey of about 15,000 adults in 15 lower-middle- and low-income Sub-Saharan African economies collected as part of the World Bank's Global Findex database. The majority of these adults reported suffering a bad harvest or significant livestock loss in the past five years, and most bear the entire financial risk of such a loss. Most adults in agricultural households lack the financial tools -- such as insurance, accounts, savings, and credit -- that could help them manage financial risks.
The Opportunities and Challenges of Digitizing Government-to-Person Payments
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2017-08-01) Klapper, Leora; Singer, Dorothe
This paper reviews evidence on the benefits and challenges faced by governments migrating from cash to digital (electronic) government-to-person (G2P) payments. When supported by an appropriate consumer financial protection framework, digital payments enable confidential and convenient financial services, which can be especially important for women. By shifting government wages and social transfers into accounts, governments can lead by example. Digitizing G2P payments has the potential to dramatically reduce costs, increase efficiency and transparency, and help recipients build familiarity with digital payments. Digital wage and social transfer payments can also provide the on-ramp to financial inclusion and in many cases the first account that the recipient has in her own name and under her control. However, digitizing G2P payments is not without its challenges. Most importantly, digitization may require significant up-front investments in building an adequate physical payment infrastructure that is able to process such payments, as well as a financial identification system and a consumer protection and education framework to ensure that recipients have safe, reliable, and affordable access to the digital payment system.