Financial globalization was off to a rocky start in emerging economies hit by Sudden Stops in the 1990s. The surge in foreign reserves since then is viewed as a New Merchantilism in which reserves are a war-chest for defense against Sudden Stops. We conduct a quantitative assessment of this...

This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...

We consider the effect of asymmetric information on the price formation process in a quote-driven market where one market maker receives a private signal on the security fundamental.A model is presented where market makers repeatedly compete in prices: at each stage a bid-ask auction occurs and...