We study variations in the severity of the 1997 financial crisis in a sample of 25 developing countries. We use both currency depreciation and stock market returns as crisis measures. Our key findings are that countries that started 1997 with an exchange rate peg experienced significantly...

Corruption is often cited as a fundamental obstacle to economic development, making anticorruption initiatives an important policy objective. However, there is little convincing empiricalevidence concerning the benefits of anti-corruption reform. We fill this gap by identifying a set ofcountries...

The CIA intervened regularly in Latin America politics during the Cold War, in some cases going asfar as bringing about regime change. While these interventions may have been considered successful from the US perspective, it is less clear what the economic and political consequences were for the...