Is backward-looking behavior in pricing or imperfect credibility of stabilization efforts responsible for the failure of inflation rates to decline to targeted levels during many disinflation programs? This paper assesses the relative importance of these two factors during a number of...

This paper examines the evolution of market structure in emerging markets banking systems during the 1990s. While a significant process of bank consolidation has been taking place in these countries, reflected in a sharp decline in the number of banks, this process has not systematically been...

Recent episodes of capital market volatility and contagion have brought up many questions about the behavior of international investors. We address some of these questions, exploring the behavior of different types of emerging market equity funds with monthly data on individual country holdings....

Using company-level data, this paper examines the relative stock-market performance of firms with different foreign-exchange exposures around the time of the 1994/95 Mexican crisis. Contrary to what one might have expected given the alleged peso overvaluation, exporting firms outperformed the...

Does country transparency affect international portfolio investment? We examine this and related questions using some new measures of transparency and a unique micro dataset on international portfolio holdings. We distinguish between government and corporate transparency. There is clear evidence...

In this paper, we examine the degree of herding and momentum trading among emerging market mutual funds. We use a novel database containing the country holdings of hundreds of individual funds on a monthly basis for the period 1996-2000. Overall, there is substantial heterogeneity in the...

Using a database of over 500 Mexican companies, we examine the determinants of the share of foreign-currency denominated debt in total debt, finding that it is positively correlated with imports, exports, and the size of the firm

One plausible mechanism through which financial market shocks may propagate across countries is through the effect of past gains and losses on investors' risk aversion. The paper first presents a simple model examining how heterogeneous changes in investors' risk aversion affects portfolio...