This paper attempts to survey, and to put into perspective, recent lterature that has analyzed the nature of credit relations between developed and developing countries.This analysis has made use of recent advances in the economics of information and strategic interaction. Traditional concepts...

Foreign portfolio investment is threatened by the risk of default and repudiation, while direct foreign investment is threatened by the risk of expropriation. These two contractual forms of investment can differ substantially in: (1) the amount of capital they can transfer from abroad to...

This paper develops a theory of capital movements in the presence of potential expropriation. The threat of expropriation is derived from utility maximizing behavior by host countries. Potential investors, anticipating this behavior, modify their investment plans to avoid expropriation. When-...

This paper examines the relationship between unfunded vested pension liabilities and the market value of a firm's shares. This relationship has important implications for the mechanism by which private pensions influence aggregate savings. Attention is paid to modeling the institutional...

The paper demonstrates that the concepts of dynamic controllability are useful for the theory of economic policy by establishing four propositions. First dynamic controllability is a central concept in stabilization policy. Second, the ability to achieve a target state, even if it cannot be...

We explore the determinants of research specialization across countries and its consequences for relative wages. Using a dynamic Ricardian model we examine the effects of faster international technology diffusion and lower trade barriers on the incentive to innovate. In the absence of any...

We incorporate trade imbalances into a quantitative model of bilateral trade in manufactures, dividing the world into forty countries. Fitting the model to 2004 data on GDP and bilateral trade we calculate how relative wages, real wages, and welfare would differ in a counterfactual world with...

Free trade is not optimal for a small country that faces uncertain terms of trade if some factors are immobile - ex post, and markets for contingent claims are incomplete. The government can improve social welfare by using commercial policy that serves as a partial substitute for missing...

If contracts are costlessly enforcible then insolvency is the only reason for nonrepayment of loans. While some models have examined the borrower's incentive to repay, it has typically been assumed that the penalty suffered by a debtor in default is imposed automatically and without cost to the...

We apply a modified 'gravity model' incorporating measures of factor endowments to analyze Japanese and U.S. bilateral trade flows and direct foreign investment positions with a sample of around 100 countries for the period 1985-1990. Country features that our analysis takes into account are...