Statistical measures of the volatility of exchange rates, interest rates, and stock prices are estimated for a number of countries. Periods of high volatility are identified and compared with periods of financial difficulty. The results indicate that GARCH models of volatility could be...

This paper reviews and draws lessons from the stabilization and reform program that Korea implemented in response to the 1997-98 crisis. The economy recovered quickly from the deep recession in 1998 and its vulnerability to a balance of payments crisis has been reduced sharply. Significant...

Using a panel of 27 countries, we analyze the effects of stock market liberalization on financial and macroeconomic development. We find that liberalization is associated with a short-term increase in real private investment growth of about 14 percentage points cumulatively in the four years...

Most developing countries have imposed restrictions on domestic and international financial transactions at one time or another. Such restrictions have allowed governments to generate significant proportions of their revenues from financial repression while restraining inflation. The eventual...

This paper takes stock of the current state of development of the financial systems in five Central European transition economies (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia) that are also leading EU accession candidates. It presents both a progress report and an...

Capital account liberalization, it is fair to say, remains one of the most controversial and least understood policies of our day. One reason is that different theoretical perspectives have very different implications for the desirability of liberalizing capital flows. Another is that empirical...

In the “varieties of capitalism” debate, scholars have paid considerable attention to the question of whether Korea and Japan have left behind their interventionist political economy for neo-liberal reform. In this paper, we re-examine the scholarly consensus that Korea has become a...

Recent financial crises have highlighted the potentially significant macroeconomic costs of financial system instability, and the potential for the instability in the financial system of one country to have broader implications for the stability of financial systems and macroeconomic performance...