Few areas of the world have escaped significant losses from episodes of bank insolvency. Bank insolvency is more costly in the developing world, where losses represent a greater share of income. The authors present data on bank insolvency episodes since the late 1970s. This new database can be...

During a crisis of confidence, announcements of deposit guarantees may give market participants short-term comfort. But stock market responses show that using public funds for bank bailouts is not a credible way to restore the health of the financial sector.The East Asian crisis began in...

Claessens, Klingebiel, and Laeven analyze the role of institutions in resolving systemic banking crises for a broad sample of countries. Banking crises are fiscally costly, especially when policies like substantial liquidity support, explicit government guarantees on financial institutions'...

The paper analyzes the provision of electronic financial services in countries, the impact of e-finance on the financial systems, and the leapfrogging opportunities for emerging markets. The authors address new policy issues and the role of government intervention in the light of these...

Countries that have experienced banking crises have adopted one of two distinct approaches toward the resolution of nonperforming assets - a centralized or a decentralized solution. A centralized approach entails setting up a government agency - an asset management company - with the full...

During a crisis of confidence, announcements of deposit guarantees may give market participants short-term comfort. But stock market responses show that using public funds for bank bailouts is not a credible way to restore the health of the financial sector.The East Asian crisis began in...

Thailand's economic crisis in 1997 was fundamentally one of private sector debt, rooted in private behavior that affected the magnitude and composition of investment and how it was financed. Thailand's crisis provides further evidence that financial liberalization must be carefully managed...

Certain measures add greatly to the fiscal cost of banking crises: unlimited deposit guarantees, open-ended liquidity support, repeated recapitalization, debtor bail-outs, and regulatory forbearance. The findings in this paper tilt the balance in favor of a strict rather than an accommodating...