Drawing on country experience, the authors analyze alternative frameworks for providing financial services. Scope of permissible activities: The integrated banking model (commercial banking fully integrated with other financial services, including investment banking) benefits both financial...

The authors review the historical relationship between the work of applied economists, and policymakers, and the institutions that came to characterize the commodity, and risk markets of the 1980s. These institutions were a response to the harmful consequences of commodity market volatility, and...

Between 1983 and 1986, Malaysia embarked on a structural adjustment program to control its fiscal and balance of payments deficits. In reaction to the shock of sharply declining commodity prices, the Malaysian government drastically cut back on public spending and allowed the exchange rate to...

That the financial sector should be liberalized was the orthodox view in the mid-1970s, during a pendulum swing toward reliance on the free market. In the early 1980s, the pendulum swung back to the left, based partly on evidence - especially from Latin America - that overly rapid reform had...

Financial reforms in formerly centrally planned economies take a different form than in market economies because they imply not only liberalizing the system but also reshaping the structure and functioning of financial markets. And the reforms must be designed to facilitate the conduct of...

Since the late 1970s, industrial activity in Greece has been deteriorating rapidly. An increasing number of industrial firms have experienced distress and failure. Because of their extensive indebtedness, the widespread distress of industrial companies has affected the soundness of Greek banks....

The authors discuss the effectiveness of credit policies in the early stages of economic development in Japan and Korea. They examine the importance of institutional arrangements for managing credit policies in the two countries. They emphasize participatory government intervention, wherein...

In the late 1980s, transitional socialist economies (TSEs) in Central and Eastern Europe were only somewhat more sophisticated than shell money systems: savings books or currency had to be used for most transactions and there was no risk assessment, information monitoring and acquisition, or...

How did financial liberalization affect Indonesian firms? The authors analyzed real and financial indicators for the establishments in their panel of Indonesian manufacturing establishments for 1981-88. Their sample was not representative, but their evidence shows that economic reform had...

The argument in favor of gradual - but sustained - financial reform is based on two factors. First, the development of borrower net worth will determine the health of the real and, ultimately, the financial sector. Thus, speeding up reforms when borrower net worth is subject to positive shocks -...