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Cited by 675

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 43 of the 43 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Access to Financial Services: A Review of the Issues and Public Policy Objectives

Open access
Claessens, S.·2006·The World Bank Research Observer
DOI 10.1093/wbro/lkl004
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Abstract

This article reviews the evidence on the importance of finance for economic well-being. It provides data on the use of basic financial services by households and firms across a sample of countries, assesses the desirability of universal access, and provides an overview of the macroeconomic, legal, and regulatory obstacles to access. Despite the benefits of finance, the data show that use of financial services is far from universal in many countries, especially developing countries. Universal access to financial services has not been a public policy objective in most countries and would likely be difficult to achieve. Countries can, however, facilitate access to financial services by strengthening institutional infrastructure, liberalizing markets and facilitating greater competition, and encouraging innovative use of know-how and technology. Government interventions to directly broaden access to finance, however, are costly and fraught with risks, among others the risk of missing the targeted groups. The article concludes with recommendations for global actions aimed at improving data on access and use and suggestions on areas of further analysis to identify constraints to broadening access.

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Metadata

Authors
Claessens, S.
Venue
The World Bank Research Observer
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2006-08-05
Volume
21
Issue
2
Pages
207-240
ISSN
  • 0257-3032 (ISSN-L)
  • 1564-6971
DOI
10.1093/wbro/lkl004
OpenAlex
W2171227005
Cited by
675
References
43
FWCI
78.04
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Access to Financial Services: A Review of the Issues and Public Policy Objectives. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/wbro/lkl004
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Claessens, S. (2006). Access to Financial Services: A Review of the Issues and Public Policy Objectives. The World Bank Research Observer. https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lkl004

Data sources

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.