The paper examines empirically the question of whether more unequal societies spend more on income redistribution than their more egalitarian counterparts. Theoretical arguments on this issue are inconclusive. The political economy literature suggests that redistributive spending is higher in...

The spectacular growth of many economies in East Asia over the past 30years has impressed the economics profession, which often refers to thesuccess of the so-called Four Tigers of the region (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan Province of China) as ""miraculous."" This papercritically...

This paper analyzes the origins, implications, and solutions for the Asian financial crisis. From the perspective of a member of the Executive Board of the IMF, as Asian problems were building, the IMF overlooked weaknesses in bank and corporate balance sheets in much of Asia: the IMF was...

This paper examines episodes of the banking system distress and crisis in a large sample of countries. The empirical results identify several macroeconomic and financial variables as useful leading indicators. The main macroeconomic indicators were of limited value in predicting the Asian...

Government spending plays a critical role in protecting and enforcing rights and civil liberties. Empirical evidence for a sample of industrial and developing countries shows that government expenditures on defense, law and order, social security, education, and health care are associated with...