In this book, policymakers, academics and market practitioners exchange views on the current economic situation, appropriate financial regulatory and supervisory standards, design of financial market institutions, and efficient safety nets for banks and other financial institutions. This volume...

Latin American experts demonstrate how market-friendly measures in key policy areas can promote greater equity and efficiency. By identifying win-win strategies, the authors challenge the conventional wisdom that there is always a tradeoff between these two objectives. This volume shows how...

Latin America in the 1990s remains the most unequal region in the world in terms of income distribution. Yet because of its changing demographics -declining fertility rates and large number of young people entering the workforce- the region now has a unique window of opportunity to reduce the...

In this book, policymakers, academics and market practitioners exchange views on the current economic situation, appropriate financial regulatory and supervisory standards, design of financial market institutions, and efficient safety nets for banks and other financial institutions. This volume...

This paper discusses the ways in which macroeconomic developments can put stress on banks, and in extreme cases lead to banking crises. These macroeconomic causes of bank vulnerability and crisis have important implications for regulatory regimes, and for macroeconomic policy itself. Much of the...

Latin America's enormous endowment of natural resources impacts many countries of the region. Economic liberalization in several countries was followed by rapid growth of foreign investment and exports of natural resource-intensive products. Growth of labor-intensive manufacturing industries was...

What are the reasons for the costs of Latin America's volatility? Because there is no consensus on these fundamental questions, there is no consensus on the appropriate policy response to macroeconomic volatility in Latin America, and other shock-prone countries. This paper provides new evidence...

Recent economic developments highlight Latin America's vulnerability to economic and financial turmoil that is triggered by events in distant corners of the globe. The Asian financial crisis that began in 1997 and the more recent Russian crisis have left the region profoundly shaken, and living...

Financial turmoil is becoming a fact of life in Latin America. The 1990s have been characterized by enormous volatility in the magnitude and cost of capital flows. The correlation of capital swings across disparate countries suggests that the quality of emerging market policies in addition to...

The sharp differences between financial markets as they exist in Latin America and how we might expect them to look under full integration suggest that the financial constraints on Latin American economic development have much to do with the region's financial markets' incomplete integration in...