Using a new, comprehensive database on bank ownership, identifying also the home country of foreign banks, for 137 countries over the period 1995-2009, this paper provides an overview of foreign bank activity and its impact of financial development and stability. We document substantial...

This paper examines which economic, fiscal, external, financial, and institutional characteristics of countries affect the likelihood that they adopt inflation targeting as their monetary policy strategy. We estimate a panel binary response transition model for 60 countries and two subsamples...

The impact of the global financial crisis varies across countries. We examine whether cross-country differences in output loss and speed of recovery are affected by differences in labor market flexibility. By employing cross-country regressions and including control variables like trade and...