In spite of significant institutional and macroeconomic reforms over the last decade or two, capital flows to developing economies remain highly volatile. In 1996, net private capital flows to emerging markets reached US$230 billions; by 1997 these flows had been cut in half; by 1998 halved...

The conventional wisdom is that politicians' rent-seeking motives increase public debt and deficits. This is because myopic politicians face political risk and prefer to extract political rents as early as possible. An implication of this argument is that governments will under-save during a...

We develop a model of gross capital flows and analyze their role in global financial stability. In our model, consistent with the data, when a country experiences asset fire sales, foreign investments exit (fickleness) while domestic investments abroad return home (retrenchment). When countries...

Emerging market economies are fertile ground for the development of real estate and other financial bubbles. Despite these economies' significant growth potential, their corporate and government sectors do not generate the financial instruments to provide residents with adequate stores of value....

After decades of trial, error, and occasional regress the pieces of a successful Latin American economic model can be seen scattered among the leading economies of the region. The most traditional macroeconomic maladies of the emerging world - such as chronic fiscal imbalances and monetary...

Firms in emerging markets are exposed to severe financial frictions and credit constraints, that are exacerbated by the sudden stop of capital inflows. Can monetary policy offset this external credit squeeze? We show that although this may be the case during moderate contractions (or in partial...