January2020 I M F S T A F F D I S C U S S I O N N O T E SDN/20/01 Finance and Inequality Martin Čihák and Ratna Sahay in collaboration with Adolfo Barajas, Shiyuan Chen, Armand Fouejieu, and Peichu Xie DISCLAIMER: Staff Discussion Notes showcase policy-related analysis and research being developed by IMF staff members and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in Staff Discussion Notes are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. FINANCE AND INEQUALITY Finance and Inequality Monetary and Capital Markets Department with input from other departments1 Prepared by Martin Čihák and Ratna Sahay in collaboration with Adolfo Barajas, Shiyuan Chen, Armand Fouejieu, and Peichu Xie Authorized for distribution by Ratna Sahay DISCLAIMER: Staff Discussion Notes showcase policy-related analysis and research being developed by IMF staff members and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in Staff Discussion Notes are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. JEL Classification Numbers: E24, H23, H53, H55, I32, I38, O15 Keywords: banking, financial depth, financial inclusion, financial stability, economic inequality Authors’ Email Addresses:
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[email protected] 1 Input from Armand Fouejieu and Shiyuan Chen (financial inclusion and inequality), Adolfo Barajas and Peichu Xie (firms’ access to finance) is gratefully acknowledged. Jerôme Vanderbussche shared data on riskiness of credit allocation. The authors want to thank—without implicating—members of the IMF’s Executive Board and IMF seminar participants, as well as Tobias Adrian, Andreas Adriano, Bidisha Das, Stefania Fabrizio, José Garrido, Florian Gimbel, Javier Hamann, Tannous Kass-Hanna, Peter Kunzel, Joshua Lipsky, David Lipton, Meera Louis, Matthew Jones, Sanjaya Panth, Jay Surti, Jarkko Turunen, Christoph Rosenberg, and Nico Valckx, for useful comments and suggestions.