In this paper, a worker's productivity is assumed to depend on his own quality and on the average quality of other workers in the same country. The external effects associated with worker quality give rise to increasing returns to average worker quality. As a result, free migration generally...

Abstract: This paper finds that lending by state banks is less procyclical than lending by private banks, especially in countries with good governance. Lending by state banks in high income countries is even countercyclical. On the liability side, state banks expand potentially unstable...

This paper presents evidence of banks using accounting discretion to overstate the value of distressed assets. In particular, we show that the stock market applies far greater discounts to a bank’s real estate loans and mortgage-backed securities than are implicit in the book values of these...

Abstract: This paper examines how corporate governance and executive compensation affect bank capitalization strategies for an international sample of banks over the 2003-2011 period. ‘Good’ corporate governance, which favors shareholder interests, is found to give rise to lower bank...

A two-tiered exchange rate system can be interpreted as a set of separate taxes on money and other financial assets.If the official two-tiered exchange rate system coexists with a black market for foreign exchange, then there is an implicit taxation of international goods trade as well.This...

This paper investigates the scope for international coordination of capital income and profit taxation.The paper considers a world of many symmetric countries where public goods are financed by taxes on capital income and on profits.In the open economy, the authorities have at their disposal a...