This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms, covering 91 economies over 1973-2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of...

Recent studies conclude that the ongoing global financial integration may have had little or no value in advancing economic growth, especially in poor countries. Capital is often found to flow quot;uphillquot; from poor to rich countries. And, when it does flow into the less developed economies,...

Using a panel dataset of 34 emerging market countries for the period 1990-2002, we examine the roles of various economic, political, and institutional variables in determining fiscal effort, as proxied by the primary surplus. We find that while fiscal effort increases, as expected, with the...

Despite stops, gaps, and reversals, financial reforms advanced worldwide in the last quarter century. Using a new index of financial liberalization, we conclude that influential events shook the status quo, inducing both reforms and reversals, while learning, more so than ideology and country...

The study documents evidence of a quot;quality effectquot; of financial liberalization on allocative efficiency, which is measured by the dispersion in Tobin`s Q across firms. Based on a simple model, the authors predict that financial liberalization, by equalizing access to credit, reduces the...

Recent studies have found that capital moves quot;uphillquot; from poor to rich countries, and, when it does flow into poor economies, it brings little or no growth dividend. This stylization is emerging as a new orthodoxy, with predictive and normative implications. In this paper, we report...

Previous early-warning systems (EWSs) for currency crises have relied on models that require a priori dating of crises. This paper proposes an alternative EWS, based on a Markov-switching model, which identifies and characterizes crisis periods endogenously; this also allows the model to utilize...

The aim of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of risk sharing mechanisms in the euro area and whether a supranational fiscal risk sharing mechanism could insure countries against very severe downturns. Using an unbalanced panel of 15 euro area countries over the period 1979-2010, the...

The aim of this paper is to provide new estimates of employment-output elasticities and assess the effect of structural and macroeocnomic policies on the employment-intensity of growth. Using an unbalanced panel of 167 countries over the period 1991 - 2009, the results suggest that structural...

The aim of this paper is to analyze unemployment and labor market developments in Algeria and assess the factors that may hamper employment creation. The results of the paper suggest that the relative low output-employment elasticities and rigid labor market are the main factors behind the still...