In recent years, some authors have warned of the increasingly widespread use of risk management techniques by financial institutions, arguing that this can cause the market to become more unstable. To analyse these claims, we present a model based on evolutionary game theory of a financial...

Purpose - As cryptocurrencies continue to gain viability as an asset class, institutional investors and publicly traded firms have started taking investment positions in digital currencies. What firms may not be considering, however, is the effect these assets may have on their risk profiles....

Showcases examples of innovative public-private risk-transfer programs for weather and disaster- related insurance and the essential role governments have in providing access to affordable insurance.

Emphasizes the value of access to financial services for the very poor through partnerships between banks and local financial institutions.

This article reviews trends in poverty, economic policies, and growth in a sample of African countries during the 1990s, drawing on the better household data now available. Experiences have varied. Some countries have seen sharp drops in income poverty, whereas others have witnessed marked...

Take-up of an innovative rainfall insurance policy offered to smallholder farmers in rural India decreases with basis risk between insurance payouts and income fluctuations, increases with household wealth, and decreases with binding credit constraints. These results are consistent with the...

Economists seeking explanations for the global financial crisis of 1997-99 are reaching consensus that a major factor was weak financial institutions, which resulted in part from inadequate government regulations. At the same time many developing countries are struggling with an overregulated...

The intensity of the crisis in financial markets has surprised nearly everyone. The authors search out the root causes of the crisis, distinguishing them from scapegoating explanations that have been used in policy circles to divert attention from the underlying breakdown of incentives....