Stephen Bell and Andrew Hindmoor compare banking systems in the U.S. and UK to those of Canada and Australia and explain why the system imploded in the former but not the latter. Canadian and Australian banks were able to make profits through traditional lending practices, unlike their...

The availability of financial instruments related to indices that track global financial conditions and risk appetite can potentially offer countries alternative options to insure against external shocks. This paper shows that while these instruments can explain much of the in-sample variation...