In this paper, I revisit an old question in the analysis of monetary policy that was first studied by Rogoff (1985) — should central banks pursue objectives that differ systematically from social welfare? I investigate how the answer to this question is affected by the degree of transparency that characterizes monetary policy. When the policy regime is one of discretion and the central bank is ...

We study financial fragility, exchange rate crises, and monetary policy in an open economy version of a Diamond-Dybvig model. The banking system, the exchange rate regime, and central bank credit policy are seen as parts of a mechanism intended to maximize social welfare; if the mechanism fails, banking crises and speculative attacks become possible. We compare currency boards, fixed rates, and...

The global International Financial Institutions (IFI’s) increasingly justify their operations in terms of the provision of International Public Goods (IPG’s). This is partly because there appears to be support among the rich countries of the North for expenditures on these IPG’s, in contrast to the “aid fatigue” that afflicts the channeling of country specific assistance. But do the IFI’s neces...

This paper investigates the recent trends in poverty and inequality since the 1990s, and decomposes poverty reduction to see who has benefited most from China’s economic growth. We find that first, by several measures poverty has declined significantly across a wide range of poverty lines during the 1990s, except for a slight increase in 1997-99 for lower poverty lines. Second, economic growth ...

This paper hypothesizes that the special role of banks as corporate quasi-insiders has been changing due to developments in informational, legal and institutional infrastructures of syndicated loan markets. We investigate the integration of intermediated and disintermediated financial markets through highly leveraged transaction (HLT) syndicated loans during the 1990s. We demonstrate that, with...

JEL Classification C12; C23; G21; G32. The only way to ensure a well-informed response to bank risks is by ensuring transparent disclosures that flourish with potential synergy. This study investigates the impact of bank disclosures on credit risk where panel data are used. PCSE and FGLS regression models are applied to a sample of 32 commercial banks in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2014. The result...

We investigate the interdependence of the default risk of several Eurozone countries (France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) and their domestic banks during the period June 2007 May 2010, using daily credit default swaps (CDS). Bank bailout programs changed the composition of both banks’ and sovereign balance sheets and, moreover, affected the linkage between the default...

This paper models loan rate-setting behavior, taking into account the product pricing and performance of the borrowing firm, and also calculates the bank’s loan-risk sensitive equity values. The lending function creates the need to model bank equity as a capped call option, which captures the credit risk directly related to management of a firm’s operations. When the product price set by the bo...

In this paper, we use a semi-parametric two-stage model to examine the effect of bankspecific, industry-specific and macroeconomic determinants of bank efficiency. This method, proposed by Simar and Wilson (2007), relaxes several deficiencies of previous two-stage analyses, which regress non-parametric estimates of bank efficiency on exogenous determinants. In particular, we propose a bootstrap...

This paper examines the role of popular participation, in particular through NGOs, in both promoting democracy (seen as essential for better governance) and the maintenance of a market economy. Making a crucial distinction between the forms and characteristics of good government, it finds no empirical relationship between the form of government and successful development. It argues that while d...