This paper provides empirical evidence for the importance of institutions in determining the outcome of crises on long-term growth. Once unobserved country-specific effects and other sources of endogeneity are accounted for, political institutions affect growth through their interaction with...

Los desastres naturales son una importante fuente de vulnerabilidad en la región del Caribe. A pesar de ser una de las regiones del mundo con más altas probabilidades de desastres naturales, el Caribe tiene los niveles más bajos de cobertura de seguro. Este articulo examina la vulnerabilidad...

Although financial development is good for long-term growth, not all countries pursue policies that render full financial development. This paper builds on an extensive political economy literature to construct a theoretical model showing that the intensity of opposition to financial development...

This paper investigates the relevance of business saving for private saving and investment around the world by constructing and exploiting a broad international, unbalanced panel of 64 countries over 1990-2012. The paper shows that businesses are the main contributors to private and national...

This paper uses simple regression techniques to make an initial assessment of the monetary damages caused by the January 12, 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti. Damages are estimated for a disaster with both 200,000 and 250,000 total dead and missing (i.e., the range of mortality that the...

The paper explores the incidence of sudden stops in capital flows on the incentives for building national institutions that secure property rights in a world where sovereign defaults are possible equilibrium outcomes. Also the paper builds upon the benchmark model of sovereign default and direct...

This paper estimates the impact of relative price volatility on sector-level investment allocation using a panel of 65 countries with data for 26 manufacturing industries over the period 1985-2003. Results indicate that volatility distorts efficient investment allocation in that investment is...

Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belizes public finance to the occurrence of hurricanes and...

Financial stability is an important policy objective, since crises are associated with large economic, social and political costs. This paper contributes to the discussion by providing new theoretical and empirical evidence on the causal connection between lack of exposure to commercial trade...

If rating agencies add no new information to markets, their actions are not a public policy concern. But as rating changes may be anticipated, testing whether ratings add value is not straightforward. This paper argues that ratings and spreads are both noisy signals of fundamentals and suggest...