In this paper we take a comparative look at capital flows to less- developed countries in two eras of financial globalization. The paper extends recent research on the developmental effects of international financial integration, long-term trends in capital mobility and “globalization in...

Would the movement of capital from to poor countries greatly increase, if the commitment to protecting property and allowing capital to move freely were more credible? This paper asks whether the British Empire provided global public goods that supported large-scale development finance before...

Can developing countries enhance credibility with international markets by adopting a hard currency peg? In this paper we review the hypothesis that adherence to the gold standard facilitated the access of peripheral countries to European capital markets in the first era of financial...

In the light of first-hand data from a Beninese urban household survey in Cotonou, we investigate several motives aiming to explain participation in Rotating Savings and Credit ASsociations. We provide empirical findings which indicate that individuals use their participation in a rosca as a...

Highly volatile exchange rates don't come cheap in economies with large liability dollarization ratios. Therefore, central banks do not follow a unique objective of price stability but its preferences include an implicit exchange rate objective. This gives us reasons to believe that the Peruvian...

In the financial crisis literature, it is usually argued that, contrary to the case of currency crises, building a time series index to identify banking crisis episodes is highly difficult, particularly because of the lack of reliable data on banking sector variables (non-performing loans,...

During the 1980s, the Peruvian society was deeply affected by two significant events: a) the economic crisis that ended in recession and hyperinflation and, b) the spread of political violence, in particular in Ayacucho, in the central Andean highlands. Taking this into account, the conditions...

Financial dollarization creates design problems for economic policy as increases the level of financial vulnerability. However, countries with high levels of dollarization have done almost nothing to reduce it. In this paper we study two ways to do it and we evaluate them within a model that...