Decomposing China's real export growth, of over 500 percent since 1992,reveals a number of interesting findings. First, China's export structure changed dramatically, with growing export shares in electronics and machinery and a decline in agriculture and apparel. Second, despite the shift into...

This paper examines the effect of crude oil prices on the prices of 35 internationally traded primary commodities for the 1960-2005 period. It finds that the pass-through of crude oil price changes to the overall non-energy commodity index is 0.16. At a more disaggregated level, the fertilizer...

This paper presents new and official survey information on bank regulations in 142 countries and makes comparisons with two earlier surveys. The data do not suggest that countries have primarily reformed their bank regulations for the better over the last decade. Following Basel guidelines many...

In many markets, industry and policymakers agree that there may be too many insurers. In others, the consensus is that there could be benefit from more competition. But this broad consensus is often supported by evidence that is more qualitative, anecdotal, or judgmental despite being...

The current account can be understood as the outcome of investment decisions made by domestic and foreign investors. These decisions can be decomposed into a portfolio rebalancing and a portfolio growth component. This paper provides empirical evidence of the importance of portfolio rebalancing...

Microfinance institutions have proved the possibility of providing reliable banking services to poor customers. Their second aim is to do so in a commercially-viable way. This paper analyzes the tensions and opportunities of microfinance as it embraces the market, drawing on a data set that...

The authors explore the relation between the establishment of a regulatory agency and the performance of the electricity sector. The authors exploit a unique dataset comprising firm-level information on a representative sample of 220 electric utilities from 51 development and transition...

An effective tax system is fundamental for successful country development. The first step to understand public revenue systems is to establish some commonly agreed performance measurements and benchmarks. This paper employs a cross-country study to estimate tax capacity from a sample of 104...

This paper uses an international multi-factor Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) model that allows for both unconditional and conditional risk factors to investigate the relationship between oil price risk and emerging stock market returns. In general we find strong evidence that oil price risk...

We test for shift contagion between pairs of East Asian equity markets over a sample including the financial crisis of the 1990’s. Employing the methodology of Gravelle et al. (2006), we find little evidence of change in the mechanism by which common shocks are transmitted between countries....