The Pacific Islands face the highest disaster risk, in per capita terms, globally. Examples of catastrophic events in the region include the 2009 tsunami in Samoa, the 2014 floods in the Solomon Islands, and the 2015 cyclone Pam in Vanuatu. Even without these catastrophic events, countries in...

Why do people save? A strand of the literature has emphasized the role of 'precautionary' motives; i.e., private agents save in order to mitigate unexpected future income shocks. An implication is that in countries faced with more macroeconomic volatility and risk, private saving should be...

This paper studies the endogenous determination of financial openness. We outline a framework where financial openness is endogenously determined by the authority's choice of financial repression as a taxation device, and where the private sector determines endogenously the magnitude of capital...