Finance has become more a problem than a solution to what the world most wants: socially inclusive growth. It has become a source of crises that threaten the development of the real economy. It has escaped accountability to democratic institutions and often helped, instead, to influence and...

Economic sanctions and covert actions from hegemonic states are common tools used to influence other countries. Less is known about non-state actors such as banks and their impact across borders. We use new firm-level data from Chile to document a substantial decrease in financial relations with...

Public international law increasingly is called upon to provide a framework for private international law-treaties for recognition and enforcement of civil judgments and to limit the adjudicative jurisdiction of civil and criminal courts, to codify rules for choice of law, and to define safe...

Basically, shadow banking is an original kind of business organization, or better a set of institutions and markets, finalized to disinvest fixed assets and convey them to the financial markets. Nowadays, tackling the subject means penetrating the hard core of financialization. Shadow banking...

This paper investigates the influence of corporate governance on financial firms' performance during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Using a unique dataset of 296 financial firms from 30 countries that were at the center of the crisis, we find that firms with more independent boards and higher...

This paper reviews key policy messages and warnings about developments in the run-up to the global financial and economic crisis that began in mid-2007 which are contained in the main publications of the IMF, the OECD and the BIS and discuss issues relevant to strengthening their surveillance...

Financial innovation is inextricably tied to asymmetric information and therefore sets the stage for financial crises. Over history, every truly meaningful crisis has had elements of asymmetric information, particularly affecting innovative financial instruments that are primary market...

It was everyone's worst nightmare; the spectre of systemic collapse. And this time, everyone was in it together. The complexity of modern financial instruments was one obvious culprit. Centuries old legal principles, such as the notion of "insurable interest", were also cast aside; old fashioned...

Regulatory arbitrage is an indispensable element of regulatory competition as it provides regulatory substitutes for firms, and allows those firms to optimally benefit from such competition. This also increases the elasticity of demand for regulators and engenders accountability among them....

Usurers have been the first step to financial intermediation. Standing as financial intermediaries, they were carrying out the high risk not to be refunded the money granted as loans. But this high risk has always been remunerated by a high interest rate on loans granted. Banks institutions, as...