A recent paper by Kraay (2003) documents the lack of any systematic associationbetween monetary policy and the outcome of a speculative attack. This paper extendsKraay’s work by introducing an improved measure of monetary policy and an additionalcountry-specific fundamental, short-term...

The analysis of reputation as a contract enforcement instrument where legal institutions, especially commercial courts, fail to enforce commercial contracts has focused on informal credit markets. The literature centres on the argument that lenders or co-borrowers in group lending can easily...

In common with many emerging market countries, South Africa’s government does not publish balance sheet wealth estimates on a market value basis, as produced in the U.S., U.K., Japan, and elsewhere. Yet without information on the market values of liquid and illiquid personal sector wealth, it...

In this article we provide an asymptotic distribution theory for some nonparametric tests of the hypothesis that asset prices have continuous sample paths. We study the behaviour of the tests using simulated data and see that certain versions of the tests have good finite sample behavior. We...

Japan's markets for money, capital and foreign exchange are among the biggest worldwide. For many years, Tokyo's role as the leading financial center in Asia has been unchallenged. However, recently, other places in the region such as Singapore and Hong Kong have invested heavily to strengthen...

In this note we show that tax-rate elasticities of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Central and East European Countries (CEECs) derived from statutory corporate income tax rates (STRs) are likely to be flawed. From a conceptual point of view STRs are problematic as they neither capture tax...

The unbiasedness hypothesis - the joint hypothesis of uncovered interest parity (UIP) and rational expectations - has been almost universally rejected in studies of exchange rate movements. In contrast to previous studies, which have used short-horizon data, we test this hypothesis using...

This paper reexamines the role of open market operations for short-run effects of monetary policy. Money demand is induced by a cash constraint, while the central bank supplies money exclusively in exchange for securities, discounted with a short-run nominal interest rate. We consider a legal...

This paper develops a business cycle model with a financial intermediation sector. Financial wealth is defined as a predetermined state variable. Both, the additional sector of financial intermediaries and predetermination of financial wealth, affect the demand for real financial wealth. If real...

The financial services industry is "special" in a variety of ways, including the fiduciary nature of the business, its role at the center of the payments and capital allocation process with all its static and dynamic implications for economic performance, and the systemic nature of problems that...