We construct an index of financial development for 23 Asian economies based on subindices of access, depth, and efficiency of financial institutions and markets and find evidence that economies with weaker financial systems are catching up to the Asian benchmark economies, namely Hong Kong,...

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model that tries to reconcile the observation that aggregate movements of exports and imports are "disconnected" from real exchange rate movements, while firm-level exports co-move significantly with the real exchange rate. Firms are...

An endogenous growth model with financial intermediation is used to show how public deposit insurance and weak prudential regulation can lead to banking crises and permanent declines in economic growth. The impact of regulatory forbearance on investment, saving and asset price dynamics under...