The study examines the economic consequences of regulated disclosure in the banking sector, focusing on its impacts on the stability of banking systems. In a cross-country study of banking systems across 49 countries in the 90s, I find that banking crises are less likely in countries with...

We use the analogy of ecological succession as our conceptual framework. We apply this analogy to the history of foreign banks in Bulgaria and argue that the current predominance of foreign banks is unlikely to be permanent, even without government action. Foreign banks have entered Bulgaria...

This paper focuses on bank rescue packages and on the behaviour of troubled banks in light of rescue offers. A puzzling feature of experience with banking crises is that in many cases policy authorities make offers of bank rescue, and banks are reluctant to accept these offers. We study...

Research reported by Thomas Homer-Dixon characterizes five social effects that can significantly increase the likelihood of violence in the emerging world, effects that are far deeper than can be controlled by security forces: (1) constrained agricultural production, often in ecologically...

Governments that privatize state industries often retain control over key distribution assets. While there are many examples of this form of partial privatization, to our knowledge there are no substantial quantitative studies of how governments use their control under these circumstances. In...

This article examines the political conditions shaping the creation of new institutional capabilities. It analyzes bank sector reforms in the 1990s in three leading postcommunist democracies – Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. It shows how different political approaches to economic...

Newly released data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within-country variation, with the variation increasing as legal environment gets less investor friendly. This paper examines why firms practice high-quality governance when law does not require it; firm attributes...

The U.S. Department of Justice, the European Commission, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have all recently voiced concern about international price- fixing cartels. The U.S. and European Union have increased prosecution of international cartels in the past decade,...

The collapse of communism brought about previously inexistent product market competition in transition economies. This paper analyzes such rivalry with a focus on some specific features of these markets. While inviting foreign multinationals is always beneficial for local consumers, cost...

CEECs are characterised by a significant presence of foreign banks and by a marked dependence upon financing from foreign bankers. We show that this situation leaves these countries open to two types of financial risk, which have grown throughout the present decade. The first relates to the...