This paper studies the relation between institutional investors and capital market development by analyzing unique data on monthly asset-level portfolio allocations of Chilean pension funds between 1995 and 2005. The results depict pension funds as large and important institutional investors...

Argentina was hit hard by the Mexican crisis of 1994-95. The Argentine peso came under attack and there was a run on bank deposits. Argentina'successfully announced a series of policies to mitigate the spillover effects, without abandoning its currency board. The authors show how capital markets...

The authors study the determinants of the growing migration of stock market activity to international financial centers. They use a sample of 77 countries and document that higher economic growth and more macroeconomic stability help stock market development. Countries with higher income per...

The authors study international financial integration analyzing firms from various countries raising capital, trading equity, and cross-listing in major world stock markets. Using a large sample of 39,517 firms from 111 countries covering the period 1989-2000, they find that, although...

The authors show that systemic risk exerts a significant impact on the behavior of depositors, sometimes overshadowing their responses to standard bank fundamentals. Systemic risk can affect market discipline both regardless of and through bank fundamentals. First, worsening systemic conditions...

The Argentine crisis witnessed, among other things, a deposit run, the suspension of deposit convertibility, and a"boom"in the stock market. The authors argue that this boom reflects the cost that depositors were willing to incur to get their money out of the banking system, in light of the...

The rise and fall of Argentina's currency board shows the extent to which the advantages of hard pegs have been overstated. The currency board did provide nominal stability and boosted financial intermediation, at the cost of endogenous financial dollarization, but did not foster monetary or...

The paper documents the major trends in financial development in Latin America and the Caribbean since the early 1990s. The paper compares trends in Latin America and the Caribbean with those in Asia, Eastern Europe, and advanced countries and compares countries within Latin America and the...

The financial systems of the Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) are at a crucial juncture. After a history of recurrent instability and crisis (a trademark of the region), they now seem well poised for rapid expansion. Since the last wave of financial crises that swept through the...