Despite revisions to bank capital standards, fundamental shortcomings remain: the rules for setting capital requirements need to be simpler, and resolution should be an essential part of the capital requirement framework.We propose a new system of capital regulation that addresses these needs by...

Private transfers between individuals or through organized charities are increasingly viewed as an alternative for government social insurance programs. This paper models the incentive effects of government subsidized private transfers and finds that while there is a significant welfare benefit...

We present cross-country evidence on the impact of remittances on labor market outcomes. Remittances appear to have a strong impact on both labor supply and labor demand in recipient countries. These effects are highly significant and greater in size than those of foreign direct investment or...

Agency problems within the firm are a significant hindrance to efficiency. We propose trust between coworkers as a superior alternative to the standard tools used to mitigate agency problems: increased monitoring and incentive-based pay. We show how trust induces employees to work harder,...

The role of remittances in development and economic growth is not well understood. This is partly because the literatures on the causes and effects of remittances remain separate. We develop a framework that links the motivation for remittances with their effect on economic activity. Because...

The paper proposes a framework for examining the process of financial market development. The framework, consistent with the functional view of financial system design, is anchored in studying the incentives facing the key players in financial markets-borrowers, lenders, liquidity providers, and...

The literature on the economic effects of electronic money and banking lacks organization and a common analytical framework. This paper identifies the main issues raised by e-money and e-banking and presents them as six puzzles. Our solutions to the puzzles build a framework for analyzing the...

Using data on the distribution of migrants from Africa, GDP growth forecasts for host countries, and after estimating remittance multipliers in recipient countries, this paper estimates the impact of the global economic crisis on African GDP via the remittance channel during 2009-2010. It...

Financial instruments are subject to inflation taxes on the wealth they represent and on the nominal income flows they provide. This paper explicitly introduces financial instruments into the standard stochastic growth model with money and production and shows that the value of the firm in this...