This briefing is part of the World Bank’s Pension Reform Primer: a comprehensive, up-to-date resource for people designing and implementing pension reforms around the world. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank and its affi...

A. Model of International Lender’s Response To Liquidity Shocks The objective of my model is to formalize the idea that bank ownership a¤ects the provision of …nancing after a liquidity shock. The key assumption in the model is that owners can control the investment decisions of banks in which they have equity holdings, but arm’s-length lenders cannot. This assumption is motivated by the di¢ cu...

The HIV structural database (HIVSDB) is a comprehensive collection of the structures of HIV protease, both of unliganded enzyme and of its inhibitor complexes. It contains abstracts and crystallographic data such as inhibitor and protein coordinates for 248 data sets, of which only 141 are from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Efficient annotation, indexing, and querying of the inhibitor data is cr...

THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR CONTROL OF IODINE DEFICIENCY DISORDERS (ICCIDD) is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization dedicated to sustained optimal iodine nutrition and the elimination of iodine deficiency throughout the world. Its activities have been supported by the international aid programs of Australia, Canada, Netherlands, USA, and also by funds from UNICEF, the World Bank and othe...

This paper presents a theoretical model to describe the effects of default risk on international lending to LDC sovereign borrowers. The threat of defaults in international lending is shown to give rise to many characteristics of the syndicated loan market: (1) quantity rationing of loans; (2) LDC policies designed to enhance creditworthiness; (3) prevalence of short maturities on international...

The transformation of financing, the changing nature of financial risks and the resulting policy challenges were the main topics of a meeting on “New financing trends in Latin America: a bumpy ride towards stability” held in Mexico City on May 26–27, 2007 and jointly organised by the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. This introduction is an overview of ...

When I was invited to this banking conference, I agreed to talk about bank interest margins – in particular, the international comparison of these margins. As it turns out, we at the Reserve Bank have said about as much as can fruitfully be said on this subject in our recent Annual Report. Therefore, I will quickly summarise this subject in the first third of this talk, then move on to somethin...

While both public and private financial agencies supply asset markets with large amounts of information, they do not generally disclose all assetrelated information to the general public. This observation leads us to ask what principles might govern the optimal disclosure policy for an asset manager or financial regulator. To investigate this question, we study the properties of a dynamic econo...

It is an honor to come to the land of the world’s major banks to talk with you about international finance. At last count, four of the five largest banks in the world, and 15 of the largest 30 were based in your country. Japan and its international banking relationships are key players in a system where every major international bank can influence, or perhaps even threaten, the entire world of ...

Gatton Professor of International Banking and Financial Economics, University of Kentucky; and Vice President and Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Valuable research assistance was provided by Zarmeen Katchi, Steven Fay, Carmen Corral-Solines, and Raquel Chmielewski. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Ba...