The paper surveys the characteristics of explicit systems of deposit insurance in 68 countries. It compares these actual practices with a set of best practices that has been adopted by IMF staff for their advice to member countries. These best practices seek to establish a system of deposit...

International financial assistance (loans and grants) can potentially raise recipients'' welfare in two ways, by affecting a direct resource transfer and by facilitating efficiency-enhancing reforms. In practice, barriers to reform limit the potential of assistance to deliver these two...

We study versions of a general equilibrium banking model with moral hazard under either constant or increasing returns to scale of the intermediation technology used by banks to screen and/or monitor borrowers. If the intermediation technology exhibits increasing returns to scale, or it is...

The paper shows that a coinsurance arrangement among countries can, in principle, play a useful role in helping countries bear the risks involved in developing their economies and integrating into the global financial system. The operation of the coinsurance arrangement is examined under...

The design of the optimal sovereign insurance contract is analyzed when: the sovereign chooses the contract; effort is not contractible; shocks are of uncertain magnitude; the sovereign can save; and the sovereign can default. Under these conditions: i) an ex ante premium leads to higher coverage;...

This paper shows that a central bank, by announcing and committing ex-ante to a bailout policy that is contingent on the realization of certain states of nature (for example on the occurrence of an adverse macroeconomic shock), creates a risk-reducing “value effect” that more than outweighs...

This paper develops a model of the lender of last resort. It provides an analytical basis for “too big too fail” and a rationale for “constructive ambiguity”. Key results are that if contagion (moral hazard) is the main concern, the Central Bank (CB) will have an excessive (little)...

This paper develops a simple model of international lending, and calibrates it to assess quantitatively the effects of contingent IMF financial support on the risk premiums and the crisis probability. In the model, the country borrows in both short and long term; market (coordination) failure...