An interesting puzzle is that trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has been associated with a sharp increase in the skill premium in both developed and developing countries.This is in contrast with neoclassical theory, according to which trade should increase therelative return of the...

We review the large literature on various economic policies that could help developingeconomies effectively manage the process of financial globalization. Our central findingsindicate that policies promoting financial sector development, institutional quality and tradeopenness appear to help...

Seit 2003 werden die deutschen Unternehmen im Rahmen des ifo Konjunkturtests regelmäßig auch nach ihrer Beurteilung der Kreditvergabebereitschaft der Banken gefragt. Die Antworten auf diese »Kreditfrage« werden sowohl für die Bildung makroökonomischer Indikatoren – wie der...

Banks entering an emerging market face a lot of uncertainty about the risks involved in lending. We use a unique unbalanced panel of nearly 700 short-term loans made to SMEs in Slovakia between January 2000 and June 2005. Of the loans granted, on average 6.0 per cent of the firms defaulted....

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank's decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank gets a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent...