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...

Reform of the mechanisms and procedures through which problems of sovereign debt sustainability are resolved is at the centre of the effort to make the international financial system less crisis prone. The purported difficulty of coordinating creditors holding distinct bond issues provides one...

We develop a simple information-based model of FDI flows in which the abundance of intangible capital in the source countries, which generates expertise in cream-skimming investment projects in the host countries and enhances FDI flows. Corporate transparency in the host countries, on the other...

We pursue the idea that a region presents a common ‘prospectus’ to investors and lenders. Specifically, we explore whether investors respond to regional developments, rather than to country-specific fundamentals. Such behaviour may be appropriate where regions are identified by common...

We examine the determinants of capital flows to four developing countries during the 1990s using an explicitly disequilibrium econometric framework in which the supply and demand for capital are not necessarily equal, and the actual amount of the flow is determined by the ‘short side’ of the...

A growing literature has examined the importance of credit market imperfections for macroeconomic fluctuations, the so-called financial accelerator. A related literature has provided evidence of international and regional co-movements in macroeconomic fluctuations. We tie together these strands...

This paper revises and extends our previous (1986) analysis of rates of return on sterling and dollar foreign loans of the 1920s. It analyzes a larger sample of 250 dollar bonds and 125 sterling issues, covering the years 1920-9. Internal rates of return are adjusted for repurchases of...

This paper shows how in theory, if the contingencies in response to which it is imposed are fully anticipated, independently verifiable and not under government control, then saving and investment should not fall following the imposition of a capital levy. Nor should the government find it more...

This paper analyses the costs and benefits of European monetary unification. The benefits take the form of the reduction in exchange risk, equalization of interest rates, decline in relative price variability and general increase in economic efficiency likely to accompany unification. The costs...

The thesis of this paper is that there is no historical precedent for Europe’s monetary union (EMU). While it is possible to point to similar historical experiences, the most obvious of which were in the 19th century, occurred in Europe, and had “union” as part of their names, EMU differs...