Traditionally, national governance and corruption challenges have been seen as: i) particularly daunting in the poorer countries, with the richer world viewed as exemplary; ii) anchored within a legalistic framework and focused on formal institutions, iii) a challenge within public sectors, and,...

In this discussion draft, linking research findings with concrete operational challenges, we review key issues in worldwide governance, and present recent empirical evidence. Focusing on defining and unbundling key governance components, such as rule of law, voice and accountability, corruption...

We are increasingly cognizant of the limits to large cross-country empirical studies in trying to understand in-depth a particular country reality, in ways useful for advice. At the same time, merely relying on a single country account at a particular point in time ignores the historical and...

Policy towards speculative bubbles is examined in a model of a finite horizon 'greater fool' bubble, with rational agents, asymmetric information and short-sales constraints. This model permits the use of standard tools of comparative dynamics and welfare economics to analyze bubble policies....

We analyze an economy with asymmetric information and endogenize the possibilities for information transmission between members of a coalition. We then define a concept of the Core that takes into account these communication possibilities. The internal consistency of the improvements is...

The current debate on the new Basel Accord gives rise to a natural question about the appropriate form of capital regulation.We construct a simple framework to analyze this issue. In our model the risk carried by a bank as well as managerial risk preference are a bank's private information. We...