To understand the consequences of the presence of international safety nets on governments' incentives to undertake reforms, we model IFIs´ interventions as country insurance policies. We find that country insurance (especially when made contingent on negative external shocks) is more likely...

Public opinion in Europe seems worried about the effect of lower-wage country competition. In both newspaper articles and in policy debates, the term ‘social dumping’ is becoming more and more popular. In many countries, trade unions worried by the effect of what they call ‘unfair...

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...