In both the industrialized and developing worlds, a distinctive feature of the last two decades has been prolonged buildups and sharp collapses in asset markets such as stock, housing, and exchange markets. The volatility has sparked intense debate in academic and policy circles over the...

An endogenous growth model with financial intermediation is used to show how public deposit insurance and weak prudential regulation can lead to banking crises and permanent declines in economic growth. The impact of regulatory forbearance on investment, saving and asset price dynamics under...

The Japanese "main bank" relationship, under which a bank holds equity in a firm and plays a leading role in its decision-making and financing, may leave a firm dependent on its main bank for financing due its information advantage over other potential lenders. While alternative sources of...

The hypothesis that Sudden Stops to capital inflows in emerging economies may be caused by global capital market frictions, such as collateral constraints and trading costs, suggests that Sudden Stops could be prevented by offering price guarantees on the emerging-markets asset class. Providing...

Currency crises tend to be regional; they affect countries in geographic proximity. This suggests that patterns of international trade are important in understanding how currency crises spread, above and beyond and macroeconomic phenomena. We provide empirical support for this hypothesis. Using...

This paper argues that fundamental weaknesses in Asian financial systems that had been masked by rapid growth were at the root of East Asia's 1997 currency and financial crisis. These weaknesses were caused by the lack of incentives for effective risk management created by implicit or explicit...