This paper introduces a framework for analyzing the role of financial factors as a source of instability in small open economies. Our basic model is a dynamic open economy model with one tradeable and one non-tradeable good with the non-tradeable being an input to the production of the...

Over the past decade several countries, including the US, have introduced or redesigned legislation that confers priority in bankruptcy upon all or some bank deposits. We argue that in the presence of contracting costs such rules can increase efficiency. We first show in a private information...

We investigate how the relative contribution of external factors to stock price movements varies with the degree of financial development. We find that financial development makes stock markets more susceptible to external influences (both financial and macroeconomic). Interestingly, this effect...

This paper analyzes the influence of market discipline on the risk-taking incentives of banks. It is shown that market discipline reduces risk if banks can credibly commit to a given level of risk before the interest rate on deposits is set. If, however, the bank can readjust the level of risk...

This paper examines whether inward FDI incentives can soften the political constraints associated with trade liberalization. After introducing the role of capital inflows into the political economy of trade framework pioneered by Grossman and Helpman (1994, 1995 and 1996), the paper traces the...

This paper examines the relationship between the exchange rate regime and trade flows using a general equilibrium model based on Bacchetta and van Wincoop (AER, 2000). We show that in general the link between trade and the exchange rate regime is ambiguous and that it depends in particular on...

Insufficient monitoring by depositors, and thus a lack of market discipline, are often seen as a typical feature of banks. We show that the opposite may be the case. Banks, defined as fims that borrow from a large number of partially uninformed investors, have a tendency to be excessively...

The level of financial development is an important determinant of the performance of capital markets. We examine stock returns in a cross section of emerging and mature markets (49 countries) over 1980-99. Returns in financially underdeveloped countries have been somewhat lower, but...

This paper presents a general equilibrium currency crisis model of the "third generation", in which the possibility of currency crises is driven by the interplay between private firms' credit-constraints and nominal price rigidities. Despite our emphasis on microfoundations, the model remains...

Nominal rigidities due to menu costs have become a standard element in closed economy macroeconomic modeling. The "New Open Economy Macroeconomics" literature has investigated the implications of nominal rigidities in an open economy context and found that the currency in which prices are set...