Financial Deepening in the CFA Franc Zone: The Role of Institutions

Dhaneshwar Ghura, Kangni Kpodar and Raju Singh

No 2009/113, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: During the 1980s and early 1990s many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries undertook reforms to promote financial sector deepening. Nevertheless, financial sectors in SSA countries remain among the shallowest in the world and, within Sub-Saharan Africa, financial depth in the CFA franc zone is even more limited. This paper sets out to investigate empirically factors that may explain why financial depth in the CFA franc zone is shallower than in the rest of SSA using panel data for a sample of 40 countries for 1992-2006. The results indicate that the gap in financial development between the CFA franc zone countries and the rest of SSA can be explained by differences in institutional quality (e.g., availability of credit information, and strength and enforcement of property rights), variables that policy makers can influence.

Keywords: WP; information registry; private sector; CFA franc; Sub-Saharan African (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2009-05-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (91)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=22974 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Financial Deepening in the CFA Franc Zone: The Role of Institutions (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2009/113

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().