Rising international bank financing to developing countries has fueled a debate on the behavior of these claims. The authors analyze claims from seven home (lender) countries on ten host (borrower) countries in Latin America. They find that banks transmit shocks from their home countries and...

Which public policies and ownership structures enhance the governance of banks? The authors construct a new database on the ownership of banks internationally and then assess the ramifications of ownership, shareholder protection laws, and supervisory and regulatory policies on bank valuations....

The authors extend the recent literature on the link between financial development and economic volatility by focusing on the channels through which the development of financial intermediaries affects economic volatility. Their theoretical model predicts that well-developed financial...

The author develops a theoretical framework to guide empirical analysis of how land registration affects financial development and economic growth. Most conceptual approaches investigate the effects of land registration on only one sector, nut land registration is commonly observed to affect not...

The relationships among competition in the financial sector, access of firms to external financing, and associated economic growth are ambiguous in theory. Moreover, measuring competition in the financial sector can be complex. In this paper the authors first estimate for 16 countries a measure...

This paper examines how market-based risk financing instruments could enable asset-poor but productive farmers exposed to production shocks to engage in riskier but higher-return agricultural activities. The financing of these exogenous shocks is addressed in a conceptual framework based on an...

In the late 1980s, after decades of poor economic management, many Latin American and Caribbean countries undertook structural reform that placed them on a path toward superior economic performance. The authors examine the experience in structural reform in five areas: governance (reforming...

The debate on fiscal policy in Europe centers on how to let automatic stabilizers work while achieving fiscal consolidation. There is significant agreement on the importance of using fiscal policy as a counter-cyclical instrument, as monetary policy can no longer play this role. In contrast,...

The author summarizes the major findings and recommendations in Averting the Old Age Crisis, describing problems in traditional pension systems and proposals for reform. Then she describes how those reforms are being implemented in many countries and examines empirical evidence about pension...

Social security systems in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union devote most of their resources to earnings-related pensions and neglect"targeted"interventions to aid losers from the transition to a market economy. As social insurance systems, they have the characteristic weaknesses of the...