The rise in foreign direct investment flowing to developing countries has created high expectations that, by drawing on this source of external financing, developing countries could initiate or accelerate processes of economic catching-up to advanced industrialized countries. By contrast, the...

This paper constructs a macro-finance model with two types of borrowers: entrepreneurs who engage in productive activities and gamblers who play in lotteries. It links a central bank's interest rate policy to expected cash ows of both types of borrowers. Via this link we study how the...

This paper studies how the exposure of a country's corporate sector to interest rate and exchange rate changes affects the probability of a currency crisis.To analyze this question, we present a model that defines currency crisis as situations in which the costs of maintaining a fixed exchange...

Since the recent financial crisis, both the Russian business community and foreign investors have started to make more and more use of ratings of the reliability of Russian banks, i.e., their ability to meet interest and repayment commitments to the investors.In response to this, the number of...

This paper presents evidence of banks using accounting discretion to overstate the value of distressed assets. In particular, we show that the stock market applies far greater discounts to a bank’s real estate loans and mortgage-backed securities than are implicit in the book values of these...

Abstract: We analyze the impact of the countercyclical capital buffers held by banks on the supply of credit to firms and their subsequent performance. Countercyclical ‘dynamic’ provisioning that is unrelated to specific loan losses was introduced in Spain in 2000, and modified in 2005 and...