An understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public...

Every approach to privatization entails tradeoffs. The chief advantage of case-by-case privatization -including sales for cash or initial public offerings (IPOs)- is efficiency. Case-by-case privatization generates revenues, gives shareholders control over managers, and provides access to...

The authors investigate how the thinness of foreign-exchange markets causes destabilization speculation, especially when exchange-rate flexibility is increased, as it has been in the countries involved in the Asian crisis. They analyze the impact of this market thinness on the dynamic capital...

Voucher privatization was expected to result in widely dispersed ownership with little effect on firms'governance. But in the first wave of privatization, more than 70 percent of Czech vouchers went to investment funds and the 10 largest Czech and Slovak investment funds (surveyed for this...

The development of government bond markets and, in particular, their currency composition have recently received much interest, partly because of their relation with financial crises. The authors study the determinants of the size and currency composition of government bond markets for a panel...

In the aftermath of a banking crisis, most attention is rightly focused on allocating losses, rebuilding properly managed institutions, and achieving debt recovery. But the authorities'decision to use budgetary funds to help restructure a large failed bank or banking system also has consequences...

Argentina has been a leader among developing countries in restructuring its banking sector. The authors analyze the performance of those banks before and after privatization and estimate fiscal savings associated with privatizingArgentina's banks rather than keeping them public and later...

For the past two decades, Chile has consistently pursued a course of macroeconomic stabilization and deep economic reform. But in recent years, real exchange rate appreciation and persistent moderate inflation have become key concerns for Chilean policymakers, suggesting the need for further...

Does financial development translate into a comparative advantage in industries that use more external finance? The author uses industry-level data on firms'dependence on external finance for 36 industries and 56 countries to examine this question. The author shows that countries with...

Common wisdom among post-socialist reformers has beento use voucher investment funds to provide the corporate governance needed to restructure newly privatized enterprises after mass privatization efforts. The idea has been that mass privatization would spread the ownership too wide and make...