How open are the capital accounts in Korea and Taiwan? Has there been a trend towards more financial openness during the 1980s? This paper aims at answering both questions by estimating a model of interest determination first outlined by Edwards and Khan, in an extension suggested by Haque and...

We quantify the causal effect of foreign investment on total factor productivity (TFP) using a new global firm-level database. Our identification strategy relies on exploiting the difference in the amount of foreign investment by financial and industrial investors and simultaneously controlling...

This book will be an important addition to the limited number of books that discuss finance and accounting issues in East Asian countries. While presenting recent empirical studies on finance and accounting in East Asian economies, it also reveals the underlying reasons for remarkable economic...

We introduce a new, market-based and forward looking measure of political risk derived from the yield spread between a country's U.S. dollar debt and an equivalent U.S. Treasury bond. We explain the variation in these sovereign spreads with four factors: global economic conditions,...

This paper provides compelling evidence that equity market liberalization, as the most efficient way to smooth financial market frictions such as credit constraints, can alleviate persistent cross-dynastic income inequality by promoting increased human capital accumulation. The authors examine...

Among the developing countries of the world, those emerging markets that have sought some degree of integration into world finance are characterized by higher per capita incomes, higher long-run growth rates, and lower output and consumption volatility. These characteristics are more likely to...

We investigate the relationship between financial integration and output volatility at micro and macro levels. Using a very large firm-level dataset from EU countries over time, we construct a measure of "deep" financial integration at the regional level based on foreign ownership at the firm...

We provide evidence on the real effects of credit supply shocks utilizing a new firm-level database from six Latin American countries between 1990 to 2005. Holding creditworthiness constant through foreign currency debt exposure, we compare investment undertaken by domestic exporters to that of...

We quantify the effects of the lending and balance sheet channels on corporate investment, by comparing the performance of foreign-owned exporters to that of domestic during two types of financial crises: "currency" and "twin." A currency crisis involves a depreciated currency, whereas a twin...

One of the major reasons behind the Asian financial crisis in 1997 was the excessive dependence of the Asian economies on commercial banks for domestic financing. The region failed to diversify its sources of corporate financing as it relied mainly on banks since its other types of financing,...