The story of Mexico's involvement in international capital markets is one of riches to rags and back to riches again. Four periods can be distinguished: stable, steady international borrowing through the 1950s and 1960s; heavy reliance on international loans through commercial bank syndicates...

The authors develop and test several new hypotheses about the anti-inflationary effect of central bank independence and exchange rate pegs in the context of different institutions and different degrees of citizen information about government policies. Theory provides strong reason to believe...

In developing the architecture for a financial system, the challenge is to combine deregulation and safety nets against systemic failure with effective prudential regulation and oversight. The author analyzes three approaches to choosing an adequate regulatory framework for a financial system....

Despite the surge in private capital flows in the 1990s, lending by the multilateral development banks continues to be a significant source of external finance for low-income and lower-middle-income countries. And for middle-income countries, which receive the lion's share of private flows,...

The authors present a framework to analyze financial globalization. They argue that financial globalization needs to take into account the relation between money (particularly in its role as store of value), asset and factor price flexibility, and contractual and regulatory institutions....

The buildup of vulnerabilities in East Asia is shown here to be mainly the result of weaknesses in financial intermediation, poor corporate governance, and deficient government policies, including pro-cyclical macroeconomic policy responses to large capital inflows. Weak due diligence by...

The author makes a case for improving capacity in developing countries to monitor and analyze data on private capital flows, especially portfolio investment flows (through both debt and non-debt instruments). He surveys recent economic literature and identifies unanswered international...

The authors present an identification strategy that allows them to study the sectoral effects of monetary policy and the role that monetary policy plays in the transmission of sectoral shocks. They apply their methodology to the case of the United States and find some significant differences in...

A rapidly growing empirical literature is studying the causes and consequences of bank fragility in contemporary economies. The authors reviews the two basic methodologies adopted in cross-country empirical studies-the signals approach and the multivariateprobability model-and their application...

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...