This World Bank Discussion Paper brings together two contributions on external debt issues. The first paper discusses the insurability of sovereign debt against default. The second paper reviews numerous studies that have been conducted over the years to identify the variables that could predict...

In this paper, it is shown that risk aversion plays a critical role in the determination of the equilibrium stock prices and their variability in a one-asset pure exchange economy. Specifically, it is argued that the variance of equilibrium stock prices is a strictly increasing convex function...

This paper analyzes the joy of giving bequest motive in which the utility obtained from leaving a bequest depends only on the size of the bequest. It exploits the fact that this formulation can be interpreted as a reduced form of an altruistic bequest motive to derive a relation between the...