This thesis examines some of the major trends that characterised the financial sector in recent years. It does so with four chapters, which explore the impact of technological innovations and new central-bank policies, in both developed and emerging economies. The first chapter addresses how the advent of the internet made it easier for financial institutions to reach clients abroad. By estimating a gravity model with data on international financial flows and submarine internet cables over 1990-2019, it shows that the internet allowed banks to increase the amount of loans and deposits to foreign clients. The second chapter focuses on the United States (US) and shows that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy had large stimulus effects on the economies of US states in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. The third chapter proposes an international analysis of the new rules for the banking sectors introduced by the regulatory package called Basel III. With a difference-in-difference analysis on data on regulatory capital and dividends over 2010-2019, it shows that automatic restrictions on dividend distributions led banks to increase their regulatory capital. Finally, chapter 4 proposes and analysis on India and addresses the policy of demonetization by the Reserve Bank of India in 2016, and the effect that it had on local conflicts. By using a generalised difference-in-differences regression setup on daily data over 2014-2018, it finds that districts with a more severe cash shortage registered relatively less violent events.