This paper examines how public disclosure of banks’ risk exposure affects banks’ risk-taking incentives and assesses how the presence of informed depositors influences the soundness of the banking system. It finds that, when banks have complete control over the volatility of their loan...

The removal of government guarantees in borrowing countries does not eliminate the moral hazard problem posed by the existence of deposit guarantees in lender countries. The paper shows that, after restrictions on international capital flows are lifted, banks in low-risk developed countries...

This paper presents a portfolio model of financial intermediation in which currency choice is determined by hedging decisions on both sides of a bank’s balance sheet. Minimum variance portfolio (MVP) allocations are found to provide a natural benchmark to estimate the scope for dollarization...

This paper shows that a central bank, by announcing and committing ex-ante to a bailout policy that is contingent on the realization of certain states of nature (for example on the occurrence of an adverse macroeconomic shock), creates a risk-reducing “value effect” that more than outweighs...

The paper presents a model of irreversible investment under uncertainty, where investment takes place whenever a threshold level of marginal returns is reached. The threshold depends positively on price volatility; a change from high to low inflation induces an upward capital stock adjustment....

In this paper, we examine how the presence of country insurance schemes affects policymakers'' incentives to undertake reforms. Such schemes (especially when made contingent on negative external shocks) are more likely to foster than to delay reform in crisis-prone volatile economies. The...

This paper analyzes the behavior of closed-end country fund discounts, including evidence from the Mexican and East Asian crises. We find that the ratio of fund prices to their fundamental value increases dramatically during a crisis, an anomaly that we denote the “closed-end country fund...

This paper evaluates ways to protect highly dollarized banking systems from systemic liquidity runs (such as the ones that took place recently in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay). In view of the limitations of available (private or official) insurance schemes, and the distortions introduced by...

De facto (unofficial) dollarization, defined as the holding by residents of assets and liabilities denominated in a foreign currency, is a policy concern in an increasing number of developing economies. This paper addresses the dollarization debate from this perspective, with the goal of setting...

This paper introduces a comprehensive database on bank ownership for 137 countries over 1995-2009, and reviews foreign bank behavior and impact. It documents substantial increases in foreign bank presence, with many more home and host countries. Current market shares of foreign banks average 20...