Could a high-access, quick-disbursing ""insurance facility"" in the IMF help to reduce the incidence of sharp interruptions in capital flows (""sudden stops"")? We contribute to the debate around this question by analyzing the impact of conventional IMF-supported programs on the incidence of...

While India is distinctive among developing countries for its fast-growing service sector, sceptics have raised doubts about the quality and sustainability of this service-sector growth and its implications for economic development. We show, consistent with the views of the sceptics, that while...

The positive association between the service sector share of output and per capita income is one of the best-known regularities in all of growth and development economics. Yet there is less than complete agreement on the nature of that association. Here we identify two waves of service sector...

Could a high-access, quick-disbursing quot;insurance facilityquot; in the IMF help to reduce the incidence of sharp interruptions in capital flows (quot;sudden stopsquot;)? We contribute to the debate around this question by analyzing the impact of conventional IMF-supported programs on the...

Could a high-access, quick-disbursing %u201Cinsurance facility%u201D in the IMF help to reduce the incidence of sharp interruptions in capital flows (%u201Csudden stops%u201D)? We contribute to the debate on this question by analyzing the impact of conventional IMF-supported programs on the...

The IMF attempts to stabilize private capital flows to emerging markets by providing public monitoring and emergency finance. In analyzing its role we contrast cases where banks and bondholders do the lending. Banks have a natural advantage in monitoring and creditor coordination, while bonds...

We review the modern history of financial crises, providing a context for analyses of the world's recent bout of financial instability. Along with indicators of economic performance in the subject countries, we present a comprehensive description of multilateral rescue efforts spanning the last...

How did the Subprime Crisis, a problem in a small corner of U.S. financial markets, affect the entire global banking system? To shed light on this question we use principal components analysis to identify common factors in the movement of banks' credit default swap spreads. We find that fortunes...

We examine the implications for borrowing costs of including collective-action clauses in loan contracts. For a sample of some 2,000 international bonds, we compare the spreads on bonds subject to UK governing law, which typically include collective-action clauses, with spreads on bonds subject...