The crises in Mexico, Thailand, and Russia in the 1990s spread quite rapidly to countries as far apart as South Africa and Pakistan. In the aftermath of these crises, many emerging economies lost access to international capital markets. Using data on international primary issuance, this paper...

We study the pattern of volatility of gross issuance in international capital markets since 1980. We find several short-lived episodes of high volatility. Over the long run, however, volatility has declined, suggesting that international financial integration has not made financial markets more...

Over the last 20 years, some financial events, such as devaluations or defaults, have triggered an immediate adverse chain reaction in other countries -- which we call fast and furious contagion. Yet, on other occasions, similar events have failed to trigger any immediate international reaction....