Monitoring technologies and pay for performance contracts are becoming popular solutions to improve public services delivery. Their track record is however mixed. To show why this may be the case, this paper develops a principal agent model where agents' motivations vary and so does the...

This paper looks at the correlation between the cyclical components of gross domestic product and the exchange rate and classifies countries' currencies as procyclical if they appreciate in good times, countercyclical if they appreciate in bad times, and acyclical otherwise. With this...

The control of bribery is a policy objective in many developing countries. It has been argued that asymmetric punishments could reduce bribery by incentivizing whistle-blowing. This paper investigates the role played by asymmetric punishment in a setting where bribe size is determined by Nash...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, it is hard to find any macroeconomic policy report that does not include some reference to financial stability or systemic risk and the resulting need for "macroprudential policies." While there is a large and growing literature on macroprudential...

Should donors interested in the effectiveness of developmental programs rely on conditional budget support or on project aid? To answer this question, we present a model in which only a subset of developmental expenditures can be subject to conditionality. We show that budget support is...

The standard macro(prudential) models focus on externalities and treat all prudential instruments as alternative, but equivalent, forms of Pigouvian taxes. This paper explicitly models individual banks' risk choices and shows that different prudential instruments affect banks' risk-taking...

Is generalized debt relief an effective development strategy, or should assistance be tailored to countries' characteristics? To answer this question, the authors build a simple model in which recipient governments reveal their creditworthiness if donors offer them to choose between aid and debt...

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 book considers how emerging economies around the world face the challenge of building good institutions and effective governance, since so much of economic development depends on having these in place. The promotion of shared prosperity and the battle against poverty require interventions...