September 2000 - Certain measures add greatly to the fiscal cost of banking crises: unlimited deposit guarantees, open-ended liquidity support, repeated recapitalization, debtor bail-outs, and regulatory forbearance. The findings in this paper tilt the balance in favor of a strict rather than an...

Hard on the heels of Mexico's crisis in 1994, a wave of financial crises swept across emerging economies - from East Asia and Russia to Brazil - bringing the fragility of banking and finance into unprecedented focus. What has gone wrong? - Caprio and Honohan examine why emerging markets, in...

"Caprio and Honohan question the widespread belief that market discipline on banks cannot be effective in less developed financial environments. There is no systematic tendency for low-income countries to lack the prerequisites for market discipline. Offsetting factors to the weaker market and...