The authors explore the relative efficiency of stock markets across countries using newly available data on transactions costs and the quality of the informational environment of stock markets. These new measures are constructed from firm-level stock returns in a panel of 60 countries for the...

The East Asian crisis began in Thailand in mid-1997 when an ailing financial sector, a slowdown in exports, and large increases in central bank credit to weak financial institutions, triggered a run on the baht. Then the crisis spread to other countries in the region, as common vulnerabilities,...

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...

The author provides evidence of a causal and economically important effect of financial development on volatility. In contrast to the existing literature, the identification strategy is based on the differences in sensitivities to financial conditions across industries. The results show that...

The authors study the empirical, cross-country relationship between macroeconomic volatility and long-run economic growth. They address four central questions: 1) Does the volatility-growth link depend on country and policy characteristics, such as the level of development or trade openness? 2)...

Whether the likelihood of a credit boom ending is dependent on its age or not, or whether the respective behavior is smooth or bumpy are important issues to which the economic literature has not given attention yet. This paper tries to fill that gap, exploring those issues with a proper duration...

The main goal of the paper is to examine whether surges in private capital inflows lead to credit booms. The authors built a quarterly database on gross capital inflows, credit to the private sector, and other macro-financial indicators for a sample of 71 countries from 1975q1 to 2010q4....

The objective of this paper is to empirically test across alternative, apparently observationally equivalent theories of currency crises. Theories of crises are often difficult to distinguish from each other based on the behavior of commonly used predictors. Using a comprehensive data set on...

The authors study the relationship between ownership structure, corporate governance, and the initial public offering (IPO) process. They examine equity ownership by different institutions, such as foreign and domestic financial institutions, banks with and without lending relationships, venture...

Over the past decades, finance theory has contributed significantly to understanding banks and identifying what qualifies them to be special financial intermediaries. Historically, banks have had a comparative advantage in certain functions - such as providing liquidity and payment services and...