During the 1990s, the concept of ""catalytic official finance"" (COF) gained prominence in policy debates. The concept revolves around the idea that the propensity of investors to lend to a country increases when the IMF provides its ""seal of approval""-backed up by only limited official...

This paper studies the relationship between economic growth and financial development in China during the post-1978 reform period. Recent studies, based on cross-country data, have found a positive association between these two variables. We find that while a positive correlation between growth...

There has been little systematic empirical study on the relationship between remittances and growth. This paper attempts to examine this relationship. Using a newly constructed crosscountry of data series for remittances covering a large sample of developing countries, we relate the interaction...

Has the spread of democracy and political participation impeded the need for speed required by financial markets and the elevated threat of contagion across borders? We examine the time span between the onset of a financial crisis and the agreement on an IMF-supported adjustment program. This...

This paper documents the evolution of measures of financial integration for major advanced and emerging markets economies, assesses whether advances in integration have had a significant positive impact on countries'' risk-adjusted growth opportunities, and identifies some of the channels...

This study uses bivariate extremal dependence measures, based on the number of equity return co-exceedances in two markets, to quantify both negative and positive equity returns contagion in mature and emerging equity markets during the past decade. The results indicate (a) higher contagion for...

This paper presents the functional responsibilities of a central bank which is required to maintain systemic financial stability without having supervisory oversight of individual financial institutions. Although the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has responsibility for supervising...

This paper characterises the jointly optimal monetary and fiscal stabilisation policy in a new Keynesian model that allows for consumers who lacking access to asset markets consume their disposable income each period. With full asset market participation, the optimal policy relies entirely on...

This paper analyzes yield spreads on sovereign debt issued by emerging markets using modern data from the 1990s and newly-collected historical data on debt traded in London during 1870–1913, a previous “golden era” for international capital market integration. Applying several empirical...

Jappelli and Pagano (1994) argues that tightening the borrowing constraints in the mortgage markets promotes savings. Employing a six-period overlapping generations model with endogenous growth and a method of simulation calibrated on the Middle East, this paper demonstrates that the above...