Despite significant capital-market reforms in the mid-1980s, the Israeli government and banks continue to play an unusually dominant role in Israeli financial markets. Israeli banks operate as merchant banks and, through pyramid structures of ownership, control large segments of manufacturing,...

How do firms that go public decide whether to list on a major stock exchange or locally? Using a unique data set on Israeli IPO?s in the US and Tel Aviv, we show that companies that list in the US are young and overwhelmingly high-tech oriented. We argue that high-quality innovative firms are...

We examine fluctuations in the risk premium on Israeli sovereign debt traded in the US between 1996 and 2000. We find that, during this period Israel's risk premium was affected predominantly by global events, most notably the crises in Asia and Russia. Domestic and regional events (e.g., the...