The historical frequency of banking crises is quite similar in high- and middle-to-low-income countries, with quantitative and qualitative parallels in both the run-ups and the aftermath. We establish these regularities using a unique dataset spanning from Denmark's financial panic during the...

The literature on the benefits and costs of financial globalization for developing countries has exploded in recent years, but along many disparate channels with a variety of apparently conflicting results. We attempt to provide a unified conceptual framework for organizing this vast and growing...

This paper examines the depth and duration of the slump that invariably follows severe financial crises, which tend to be protracted affairs. We find that asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. On a peak-to-trough basis, real housing price declines average 35 percent stretched out over...

The paper develops an international macroeconomic model of FDI flows with a unique feature: a hands-on management ability to react in real time to changing economic environments. Anticipating this advantage, foreign direct investors can outbid other investors in a certain industry in which they...

In the presence of economies of scale in the investment technology, trade openness may have non-conventional effects on the level of investment, its cyclical behavior, and the volatility of the terms of trade. Trade openness may lead to boom-bust cycles of investment supported by self-fulfilling...

A positive productivity shock in the host country tends typically to increase the volume of the desired FDI flows to the host country, through the standard marginal profitability effect. But, at the same time, such a shock may lower the likelihood of making any new FDI flows by the source...

We develop a stylised model of multiple equilibria, with country risk spreads at the focus of the analysis. Fears that the country default on its debt triggers a reversal in the direction of inflows of international financial capital raise interest-rate spreads and thus the cost of servicing the...

This paper introduces the concept of debt intolerance,' which manifests itself in the extreme duress many emerging markets experience at debt levels that would seem manageable by advanced country standards. We argue that safe' external debt-to-GNP thresholds for debt intolerant countries are...

This paper offers a "panoramic" analysis of the history of financial crises dating from England's fourteenth-century default to the current United States sub-prime financial crisis. Our study is based on a new dataset that spans all regions. It incorporates a number of important credit episodes...

We develop a model that captures important features of debt crises of the Brazilian type. Its applicability to Brazil lies in the fact that (1) macro fundamentals were sound in the wake of the crisis (e .g., a non-negligible primary surplus, a relatively low debt/GDP ratio, low inflation, etc.);...