Over the past two decades, financial market crises with similar features have occurred in different regions of the world. Unstable cross-market linkages during financial crises are referred to as financial contagion. We simulate the transmission of financial crises in the context of a model of market participants adopting various strategies; this allows testing for financial contagion under alt...

The US accounting profession was caught up in, and some say responsible for, the whirlwind of accounting and business scandals that rocked the US markets in 2002. To restore investor confidence in financial information, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act created a new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board with the authority to set standards for auditors of publicly traded companies, thus ending a centu...

This paper addresses the context issue in interpreting Internet based non-financial information that may indicate the financial health of a company. Context is defined as the collection of implicit assumptions about the context definition (i.e., meaning) and context characteristics (i.e., quality) of the information. This research examines corporate web sites for explicit and implicit non-finan...

The sophistication of financial decisions varies with age: middle-aged adults borrow at lower interest rates and pay fewer fees compared to both younger and older adults. We document this pattern in ten financial markets. The measured effects can not be explained by observed risk characteristics. The sophistication of financial choices peaks at about age 53 in our cross-sectional data. Our resu...

We examine the differential effects of financial status and exporting activity on the likelihood of survival for firms in the UK and France two countries with different financial systems. We aim to answer two main questions: What is the direct impact of financial characteristics and different facets of exporting activity on the likelihood of survival? Do the sensitivities of survival incidence ...

Bringing Financial Literacy and Education to Low and Middle Income Countries: The Need to Review, Adjust, and Extend Current Wisdom This paper presents a World Bank led and Russia trust fund financed work program to measure financial capability and the effectiveness of financial education in low and middle income countries. The two activities and their staging have been motivated by the lessons...