Since the mid-1980s Japan has been one of the world's leading sources of foreign direct investment (FDI) reflecting the continuing internationalisation of Japanese corporations. This paper provides a broad survey of trends in Japanese FDI in the postwar period and considers its motivations and...

Much has changed in international finance in the twenty years since UNU-WIDER was founded. This paper identifies five broad contours of what we might expect in the next twenty years: the flow of capital from ageing societies to the more youthful economies of the South; the growth in the...

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims.First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it...

Financial development plays an important role in the structure of the trade balance and promoting economic development. Trade literature suggests that differences in economies’ endowments of labour, land, physical capital and technology explain the dynamics and patterns of international trade...

The 1990s have witnessed pronounced boom-bust cycles in emerging-markets lending, culminating in the Asian financial and currency crisis of 1997-98. By examining the links between sovereign credit ratings and dollar bond yield spreads over 1989-97, this paper aims at broad empirical content for...

A crucial and outstanding issue for the European economy and democracy.In March 2009, the European Commission recognized the need to put "the interests of European investors, consumers and SMEs at the centre of the financial markets reform”. The Commission therefore announced it will "ensure...

This policy brief examines issues associated with the design and implementation of regulatory policymaking in interconnected financial markets. The policy brief explains why international interdependence among nations' financial markets and regulations can provide an incentive for national...

This paper presents and analyzes a simple banking model in which banks have access to international capital markets and domestic asset markets. The model generates two types of equilibria: a no-default equilibrium and a mixed equilibrium. In the no-default equilibrium, all banks are symmetric...

Financial markets have experienced unprecedented transformations, signs of which have emerged since the late 1970s. In recent years substantial consolidation occurred. In response to changes in macroeconomic variables, such as GDP, industrial production, inflation and the political business...

We build a model of financial sector illiquidity in an open economy. Illiquidity is defined as a situation in which a country's consolidated financial system has potential short-term obligations that exceed the amount of foreign currency available on short notice. We show that illiquidity is key...