Our friend and colleague Rüdiger Dornbusch passed away before he was able tocomplete his book based on the Munich Lectures in Economics that he gave inNovember 17, 1998, at the Center for Economic Studies of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.The lectures contain a fascinating overview of the...

In this paper we characterize empirically the comovements of macro variables typically observed in middle income countries, as well as the boom-bust cycle that has been observed during the last two decades. We find that many countries that have liberalized their financial markets, have witnessed...

We analyse how reversals of several types of capital flows impact currency crises in emerging market and developing economies. Estimates of logit models show that reversals of (equity and debt) portfolio flows significantly increase the likelihood of currency crises in emerging market economies....

We examine the impact of various dimensions of financial reform on the likelihood of systemic and non-systemic banking crises. Using new financial reform measures for a large sample of developing and developed countries for the period 1973 to 2002, our multivariate probit modeling results...

We examine to what extent banks' stock market values during the 2007-2012 financial crisis were driven by increases in the default risk of banks designated as globally systemically important by the Financial Stability Board. We find that bank market values hardly respond to changes in the...

The paper analyzes a very stylized model of crises and demonstrates how the degree of strategic complementarity in the actions of investors is a critical determinant of fragility. It is shown how the balance sheet composition of a financial intermediary, parameters of the information structure...

This paper attempts to reconcile the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private...

This paper examines the time-profile of the impact of systemic banking crises on GDP and industrial production using a panel of 24 countries over the inter-war period and compares this to the post-war experience of these countries. We show that banking crises have effects that induce medium-term...

Does enhanced shareholder liability reduce bank failure? We compare the performance of around 4,200 state-regulated banks of similar size in neighboring U.S. states with different liability regimes during the Great Depression. The distress rate of limited liability banks was 29% higher than that...