This paper investigates whether the higher prevalence of South multinational enterprises (MNEs) in risky developing countries may be explained by the experience that they have acquired of poor institutional quality at home. We confirm the intuition provided by our analytical model by empirically...

Since the introduction of the HIPC Initiative in the early 2000s, indebted LICs had to show a decent governance performance before their debts were forgiven. We discuss the hypothesis that during the follow-up, Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), the World Bank has refrained from this...

This paper argues that better governance practices can reduce the costs, risks and uncertainty of financial intermediation. Our sample covers high-, middle- and low-income countries before and after the global financial crisis (GFC). We find that net interest margins of banks are lower if...

When trading, firms choose between different payment contracts. As shown theoretically in Schmidt-Eisenlohr (forthcoming), this allows firms in international trade to optimally trade-off differences in financing costs and enforcement across countries. This paper provides evidence from a large...

This paper presents twelve budget institutions that can support planning and delivery of credible fiscal strategies in the fiscal policy-making process. The resulting framework is applied to seven low-income countries and the status of their budget institutions compared to the G-20 advanced and...

The external debt burden of many low-income developing countries has increased significantly since the 1970s. Developments in a sample of ten countries show that the main factors behind the buildup of debt were (1) exogenous (adverse terms of trade shocks or weather), (2) a lack of sustained...