We develop a model of endogenous lobby formation in which wealth inequality and political accountability undermine entry and financial development. Incumbents seek a low level of effective investor protection to prevent potential entrants from raising capital. They succeed because they can...

We study the effects of differences in local financial development within an integrated financial market. To do so, we construct a new indicator of financial development by estimating a regional effect on the probability that, ceteris paribus, a household is shut off from the credit market. By...

Do legal institutions governing financial contracts affect the nature of real investments in the economy? We develop a simple model and provide evidence that the answer to this question is yes. We consider a levered firm's choice of investment between innovative and conservative technologies, on...

We develop a tractable, two-country, overlapping-generations model and show that cross-country differences in financial development can explain three recent empirical patterns of international capital flows: Financial capital flows from relatively poor to relatively rich countries while foreign...

We show in a tractable, multi-country OLG model that cross-country differences in financial development explain three recent empirical patterns of international capital flows. International capital mobility affects output in each country directly through the size of domestic investment as well...

Recent literature has proposed two alternative types of financial frictions, i.e., limited commitment and incomplete markets, to explain the patterns of international capital flows between developed and developing countries observed in the past two decades. This paper integrates both types of...

The paper analyses global trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) and the interlinkages between FDI, trade and competitiveness in host developing countries. The rapid rate of growth and the recent changes in the global patterns of FDI are attributed to both macroeconomic and microeconomic...

This paper investigates the roles played by the global macroeconomic environment and by Brazilian policy in shaping the Brazilian debt crisis, and assesses the prospects for Brazil's sovereign debt after five years of the `muddling-through' strategy. We first examine Brazilian debt from a...

The global financial crisis has lead to a renewed interest in discretionary fiscal stimulus. Advocates of discretionary measures emphasize that government spending can stimulate additional private spending --- the so-called Keynesian multiplier effect. Thus, we investigate whether the...