The large international bailouts of the 1990s have been criticized for different reasons, in particular for generating moral hazard at the expense of the global taxpayer. We argue in this paper that some of these concerns are exaggerated or misleading because international bailouts have no or...

It is often argued that the provision of liquidity by the international institutions such as the IMF to countries experiencing balance of payment problems can have catalytic effects on the behavior of international financial markets, i.e., it can reduce the scale of liquidity runs by inducing...

American hospitals are required to provide emergency medical care to the uninsured. We use previously confidential hospital financial data to study the resulting uncompensated care, medical care for which no payment is received. We use both panel-data methods and case studies from state-wide...

This paper develops a model of the lender of last resort (LOLR). In a simple one-period setting, the Central Bank (CB) should only rescue banks which are above a threshold size, thus providing an analytical basis for "too big too fail". We also provide a rationale for "constructive ambiguity"....

This paper examines whether recent international policy initiatives to facilitate financial rescues in emerging market countries have influenced debtors' incentives to access official sector resources. The paper highlights a country's systemic importance as a key characteristic that drives...

In 1996/1997 Bulgaria was hit by a severe financial crisis, spreading from a banking crisis to a currency crisis. While being widely neglected by the financial crisis literature and the international discussion we argue that the Bulgarian Financial Crisis might serve as an illustrative example...