Using bank data for 80 countries for 1988-95, the authors show that differences in interest margins and bank profitability reflect various determinants: bank characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, explicit and implicit bank taxes, regulation of deposit insurance, general financial structure,...

Taking the Korean experience as a laboratory experiment in systemic financial crises, the authors analyze distress in individual institutions among two groups of financial intermediaries. They pool together a group of large financial intermediaries (commercial banks, merchant banking...

In an economy where decisions are decentralized and made under conditions of uncertainty, the financial system can be seen as the complex of institutions, infrastructure, and instruments that society adopts to minimize the costs of trading promises when agents have incomplete trust and limited...

The authors argue that non-financial firms act as intermediaries, by channeling short-term funds from the financial institutions in an economy, to their best use. Non-financial firms act in this way because they may have a comparative advantage in exploiting informal means of ensuring that...

The debates surrounding the recent East Asian crisis have focused not only on causes but also on policy actions in the wake of the initial shock. This has raised questions about the relationship between monetary policy and market confidence. Specifically, would rising interest rates bolster or...

The issue of the credit crunch in the aftermath of the Asian crisis has stimulated much debate. Indeed, some features of the East Asian economies, such as bank-based financial systems and high leverage, make them particularly vulnerable to monetary and financial shocks. Under such circumstances,...

Over the past 10 years the three Baltic republics have undertaken significant restructuring of their banking sectors, supported by the World Bank through three projects: the Financial Institutions Development Project in Estonia, the Enterprise and Financial Sector Restructuring Project in...

The author documents the precise costs of debt and equity issuance, both domestically and internationally, for firms in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Costs include investment banking and legal fees, regulatory and exchange listing costs, rating agency fees, and expenditures for marketing and...

Weaknesses in the corporate sector have increasingly been cited as important factors in financial crises in both emerging markets and industrial countries. Analysts have pointed to weak corporate performance and risky financing patterns as major causes of the East Asian financial crisis. And...

Recent empirical work has shown that financial development is important for economic growth, since well-developed financial markets are more effective at allocating capital to firms with high-value projects. This raises the question of whether firms with high return projects in countries with...