This chapter takes stock of the current state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses recent developments including innovations that might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models.  Using an array of different data, we document that African banking systems are...

The purpose of our work is to explore contagious financial crises. To this end, we use simplified, thus numerically solvable, versions of our general model [Goodhart, Sunirand and Tsomocos (2003)]. The model incorporates heterogeneous agents, banks and endogenous default, thus allowing various...

As financial stability has gained focus in economic policymaking, the demand for analyses of financial stability and the consequences of economic policy has increased. Alternative macroeconomic models are available for policy analyses, and this paper evaluates the usefulness of some models from...

This paper first extends the canonical General Equilibrium with Incomplete Markets (GEI) model with money and default to allow for competitive banking and financial instability. Second, it introduces capital requirements for the banking sector to assess the short and medium term macroeconomic...

This paper contains a General Equilibrium model of an economy with Incomplete Markets (GEI) with money and default. The model is a simplified version of the real world consisting of a non-bank private sector, banks, a Central Bank, a government and a regulator. The model is used to analyse...

This paper evaluates relations between industrial activity and the structure of countries’ financial, ownership and legal systems. Using data on 27 industries in 14 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 1995, we evaluate whether the structure of countries` systems is associated with...

China has sought to improve enterprise performance not through privatisation as in other transition economies, but through corporatisation as means of improving corporate governance. Actual governance practices of corporatised Chinese firms are however seriously defective, characterized by...

In this paper we examine how the quantity of information generated about firm prospects can be improved by splitting a firm’s cash flow into a ‘safe’ claim (debt) and a ‘risky’ claim (equity). The former, being relatively...

Was the London Stock Exchange (LSE) little more than a Dickensian den of speculation, or did it make a contribution to industrial development in Interwar Britain?  The interwar stock market laboured under problems of weak disclosure, inadequate investor protection and ineffective...

China has sought to improve enterprise performance not through privatisation as in other transition economies, but through corporatisation as means of improving corporate governance. Actual governance practices of corporatised Chinese firms are however seriously defective, characterized by...