"Drawing on the recent literature on economic institutions and the origins of economic development, the authors offer a political economy explanation of why institution building has varied so much across transition economies. They identify dependence on natural resources and the historical...

Drawing on the recent literature on economic institutions and the origins of economic development, the authors offer a political economy explanation of why institution building has varied so much across transition economies. They identify dependence on natural resources and the historical...

Drawing on the recent literature on economic institutions and the origins of economic development, the authors offer a political economy explanation of why institution building has varied so much across transition economies. They identify dependence on natural resources and the historical...

The authors analyze the role of institutions in resolving systemic banking crises for a broad sample of countries. Banking crises are fiscally costly, especially when policies like substantial liquidity support, explicit government guarantees on financial institutions liabilities, and...

The appropriate level of bank capital and, more generally, a bank's capacity to absorb losses, has been at the core of the post-crisis policy debate. This paper contributes to the debate by focusing on how much capital would have been needed to avoid imposing losses on bank creditors or...