In 2004, the mutual fund industry of Costa Rica experienced a massive run by investors that reduced the industry to half its size in a month. This paper explores how weaknesses in the regulatory framework played a role in the crisis and draws lessons for developing countries. The analysis of...

This paper uses flow-of-funds and balance sheet data to analyze the impact of financial crises on corporate financing and GDP in a range of countries. Post-crisis GDP contractions are mainly accounted for by declines in investment and inventory and are more severe for emerging market countries....

This paper explores the behavior of emerging market mutual funds using a novel database covering the holdings of individual funds over the period January 1996 to March 1999. An examination of individual crises shows that, on average, funds withdrew money one month prior to the events. The degree...

This paper examines equilibrium price relationships and price discovery between credit defaul swap (CDS), bond, and equity markets for emerging market sovereign issuers. Findings suggest that CDS and bond spreads converge despite various pressures that arise in the market. In most countries,...

This paper assesses the status of financial development in Emerging Europe, analyzes the factors that have shaped it, and discusses policy priorities. Financial development has progressed to varying degrees across the region. Macroeconomic stability and institutional quality have been important...

While a number of emerging market crises were characterized by widespread contagion during the 1990s, more recent crises (notably, in Argentina) have been mostly contained within national borders. This has led some observers to wonder whether contagion might have become a feature of the past,...

Do the dynamics of net flows to U.S. retail mutual funds affect equity returns in emerging markets? The question merits further examination since retail investors in mutual funds can exert a much greater degree of "control" over these funds via cash injections or redemptions at any time. A VAR...

This paper examines the institutional and macroeconomic determinants of stock market development using a panel data of 42 emerging economies for the period 1990 to 2004. The paper finds that macroeconomic factors such as income level, gross domestic investment, banking sector development,...

We estimate ex post returns to emerging market debt by combining secondary-market prices with observed flows based on World Bank data. From 1970-2000, returns averaged 9 percent per annum, about the same as returns on a ten-year U.S. treasury bond. This reflects the combined effect of the 1980s...

Emerging European countries have made large strides in developing their local capital markets since the early-1990s. However, the rate of development has been widely disparate across countries and market segments, underpinned by the varying degrees of progress made in key areas such as...