Why should countries buy expensive catastrophe insurance? Abstracting from risk aversion or hedging motives, this paper shows that catastrophe insurance may have a catalytic role on external finance. Such effect is particularly strong in those middle-income countries that face financial...

This paper computes a new financial globalization index for a large sample of countries for 1992-2016. Unlike other measures, the financial globalization index corrects for the heteroscedasticity of global volatility. This leads to a downward adjustment of financial globalization trends for...

This paper presents a model of bank risk taking and government guarantees. Levered banks take excessive risk, as their actions are not fully priced at the margin by debt holders. The impact of government guarantees on bank risk taking depends critically on the portion of bank investors that can...

This paper studies the impact of competition on the determination of interest rates and banks’ risk-taking behavior under different assumptions about deposit insurance and the dissemination of financial information. It finds that lower entry costs foster competition in deposit rate sand reduce...

In an economy à la Diamond and Dybvig (1983), we present an example in which foreign lenders find it profitable to invest in an emerging market if, and only if, the emerging market government imposes taxes on short-term capital inflows. This implies that capital controls that are effective in...

The domestic taxation of petroleum products is an important source of revenue in most countries. However, there is a wide variation of tax rates on petroleum products across countries, which cannot be explained by economic theory alone. This paper surveys different considerations advanced for...

In this paper a simple optimizing model is developed to analyze the implications of a banking crisis. Banks are incorporated by assuming that they intermediate funds between firms and households. It is shown that when depositors perceive the quality of deposits to have deteriorated, they switch...

With the virtual elimination of tariffs and quotas under GATT, antidumping measures emerged as a key instrument of protection. Under antidumping actions exporters can either raise the price to eliminate the dumping margin or pay an antidumping duty. This paper analyzes the incentives to...

Using aggregate and bank level data for several countries, the paper studies what happens to the banking system in the aftermath of a banking crisis. Contemporary crises are not accompanied by declines in aggregate bank deposits, and credit does not fall relative to output, although the growth...