infonet-economy

We examine the link between international aid, political instability and economic growth in autocratic countries. First, we discuss the manner in which externally provided liquidity can affect looting and instability in an autocratic country, through the generation of outside options for a dictator who has property rights over the resource wealth of the country. We then use a…

For decades, racial profiling has been subject of intense debate in US jurisdiction. Recently, outcome tests based on economic models have contributed to the legal discourse. However, it is not readily obvious if and to what extent they also pertain to European jurisdiction, where racial profiling has only as of late stirred up controversy. In a comprehensive examination of their…

This paper updates our previous work on the level and evolution of original sin. It shows that while the number of countries that issue local-currency debt in international markets has increased in the past decade, this improvement has been quite modest. Although we find that countries have been borrowing at home, thanks to deepening domestic markets, we document that foreign…

This paper develops a macroeconomic framework where the representative bank is owned by inside and outside owners and copes with capital requirements that vary countercyclically. The issuance of outside equity is characterized getting insights from the literature on corporate governance, especially that on corporate governance and investor protection. The insider receives utility…

This paper builds a new dataset with detailed information on the universe of foreign government bonds issued in New York in the 1920s and uses these data to describe the behavior of the financial intermediaries which operated in the New York market during the period leading to the interwar debt crisis. The paper starts by showing that concerns over reputation played an important role…