Financial crises affect income distribution by way of different channels. The authors argue that financial transfers are an important channel which has been overlooked by the literature. They study the role of financial transfers by analyzing some of the most severe Latin American crises during...

The authors investigate the origins of the East Asian crisis and its contagion, examine the channels of contagion, and discuss policy recommendationsThey make detailed recommendations in the context of nine general lessons learned from the East Asian crisis. 1) Preventing crises and contagion:...

The most important challenge of Estonia's strategy for integrating its financial sector with that of the European Union (EU) is to upgrade its capacity for prudential regulation and supervision enough to gain recognition from its EU counterparts. Doing so is also a crucial complement to...

The authors investigate whether resident enterprise managers have an informational advantage about the countries in which they work. They propose a method for extracting information available to resident managers but unknown to investors and forecasters. They rest their hypothesis of...

The authors address the trading strategies of mutual funds in emerging markets. The data set they develop permits analyses of these strategies at the level of individual portfolios. A methodologically novel feature of their analysis: they disentangle the behavior of fund managers from that of...

Financial market instability has been the focus of attention of both academic and policy circles. Rating agencies have been under particular scrutiny lately as promoters of financial excesses, upgrading countries in good times and downgrading them in bad times. Using a panel of emerging...

International mutual funds are one of the main channels for capital flows to emerging economies. Although mutual funds have become important contributors to financial market integration, little is known about their investment allocation, and strategies. The authors provide an overview of mutual...

Typically the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is analyzed from a macroeconomic perspective, to examine the implications for capital market flows or for the aggregate degree of financial integration. This analysis often involves examining whether certain conditions of...

The authors investigate whether integration with global markets affects the financing choices of firms from East Asia and Latin America. Using firm-level data for the 1980s and 1990s, they study how leverage ratios, the structure of debt maturity, and sources of financing change when economies...