This report has been lightly edited by the International Labour Office and the Asian Development Bank. The responsibility for opinions expressed in this report rests solely with the author, and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the International Labour Office or the Asia Development Bank of the opinions expressed therein.

Through their transformation of assets, banks carry a considerably degree of non-diversifiable economic risks on their books, and given that banks are extremely sensitive to deadweight costs of financial distress, we ask whether international extensions of credit may improve the diversification of such risks. Using an unpublished data set on the cross-border claims of banks located in four coun...

Asset prices have played a prominent role in the present business cycle, both in terms of the amplitude of their fluctuations and because of their impact on financial institutions and economic activity. Such medium-term swings are of course not new; the last similar episode took place in the early 1970s. What has drawn attention to the recent asset price movements is not only their absolute siz...

Motivated by a positive correlation between reserve accumulation and the widespread adoption of central bank independence legislation in Latin America, this paper develops sovereign default model with an independent that can accumulate risk-free foreign asset. I show if is more patient than government as households are, equilibrium, issues debt what socially optimal, accumulates reserves to und...

This paper uses a large panel of bilateral bank flow data to assess how institutions and politics affect international capital -bank in particularflows. The following key findings emerge: 1) The empirical "gravity" model is the benchmark in explaining the volume of international banking activities. 2) Conditioned on standard gravity factors (distance, GDP, population), well-functioning institut...

while many international organisations have independent evaluations, including the international monetary fund (imf) and world health organization (who), uniquely the world bank in its 2015 world development report sought to ascertain the potential biases that influence how its staff interpret evidence and influence policy. here, we describe the world bank’s study design, including experiments ...