The empirical relationship between capital controls and the financial development of credit and equity markets is examined. We extend the literature on this subject along a number of dimensions. Specifically, we (1) investigate a substantially broader set of proxy measures of financial development; (2) create and utilize a new index based on the IMF measures of exchange restrictions that incorp...

Household debt levels have increased substantially over the last decade, both in terms of the total amount outstanding and relative to incomes. At the same time, household debt portfolios became more diversified. While such qualitative observations apply to many OECD countries, the betweencountry differences remain very stark and are empirically more important than changes over time within any ...

Millions of Americans live in communities without an adequate supply of affordable housing. The governmental response to the crisis has focused on subsidies to private developers who build below–market housing, with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit at the center of this effort. Although federally funded, the LIHTC program grants states wide latitude in distributing billions of dollars of tax c...

Article history: Received 11 June 2012 Received in revised form 19 December 2013 Accepted 20 December 2013 Available online 28 December 2013 Adjustment costs play a prominent role in explanations of capital structure, but the extent of their economic importance is unknown. A credit line has institutional features important for this analysis, notably its sunk costs of access to the debt market, ...

Does related lending, the practice of bankers extending credit to their own enterprises, help financial development by allowing bankers to assess risk ex ante and monitor borrowers ex post, or does it hinder financial development by creating a mechanism for bankers to loot their own banks? Drawing on both cross-country regressions and case studies we argue that whether related lending is positi...

Cotton is one of the most important smallholder cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). How to ensure input supply, credit recovery and competition is a subject of intense policy debate. This paper examines the performance of cotton sector development policies in Mozambique and Zambia. Both countries face the challenge of organizing input supply to farmers in the absence of rural credit markets...

Credit Market Constraints and Labor Market Decisions In this paper, we examine whether imperfections in credit markets spill over to other markets, particularly the labor market. We take the case of Italy, a country that experienced changes in the mortgage market brought about by the 1992 European unification and other institutional shifts. These events make Italy a good laboratory to study the...

Compact city development has, over the last 20 years or so, emerged as the preferred response to the goal of sustainable development. As such, it is pertinent to examine planning practices to see whether the traditional economic bias in planning is now balanced by aims and practices in support of environmental and social sustainability. In this light the social, environmental, and economic goal...

Household debt levels have increased substantially over the last decade, both in terms of the total amount outstanding and relative to incomes. At the same time, household debt portfolios became more diversified. While such qualitative observations apply to many OECD countries, the betweencountry differences remain very stark and are empirically more important than changes over time within any ...

Credit Market Constraints and Labor Market Decisions In this paper, we examine whether imperfections in credit markets spill over to other markets, particularly the labor market. We take the case of Italy, a country that experienced changes in the mortgage market brought about by the 1992 European unification and other institutional shifts. These events make Italy a good laboratory to study the...