De Nicol? Honohan, and Ize assess the benefits and risks associated with dollarization of the banking system. The authors provide novel empirical evidence on the determinants of dollarization, its role in promoting financial development, and on whether dollarization is associated with financial...

This paper concludes that Colombia's impressive fiscal adjustment during 1985 - 1987 was due to structural changes in fiscal policy, not simply to such fortuitous events as the coffee boom. Although impressive, the fiscal adjustment fell short of actually improving the government's net financial...

In developing countries, the evolution of financial markets and growing disenchantment with directed credit programs and bank-by-bank credit ceilings have increased the interest in examining and moving to indirect methods of implementing monetary policy. The authors provide an overview of the...

The authors study the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private domestic credit...

The authors investigate what has motivated the large portfolio flows to several developing countries in recent years. Using monthly data on U.S. capital flows to nine Latin American and nine Asian countries (instead of monthly reserves data), they analyze the behavior of bond and equity flows to...

The authors analyze the response of private and public investment to external shocks, macroeconomic adjustment, and structural reform in three sets of countries: (a) countries that pursued structural reform and liberalization in Latin American in the 1970s (Chile) or the 1980s (Mexico and...

The remarkable surge in private capital flow to developing countries since 1990 has greatly facilitated their rapid growth, at a time when OECD countries have been in, or passed through, recession. The importance of these flows to the current account of severallarge developing countries has...

Analyzing new data, the authors find that the general trend toward increased use of foreign-currency-denominated bank deposits in emerging markets has continued, despite declines in a few countries. Their analysis of the new data suggests that a sizable fraction (about half, on average) of funds...

Why do firms and banks hold foreign currency denominated liabilities? The authors argue that foreign currency debt, by altering the effect of a devaluation on output, has a disciplining effect when the Central Bank's objectives differ from the social optimum. However, under imperfect...

The authors study what drives private capital flows to developing countries, as well as the apparent response of official lending for the years 1978-97. Econometric results reveal that non-foreign direct investment portfolio flows to a country tended to rise in response to: 1) An increase in the...