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Working Paper
Crisis resolution: next steps
At the April 2003 meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committees, it was decided to further encourage the contractual approach to smoothing the process of sovereign debt restructuring by encouraging the more widespread use of collective action clauses (CACs) in international bonds. This decision was shaped partly by Mexico's successful launch of a bond subject to New York law but featuring CACs, and by subsequent issues with similar provisions from other emerging market countries. This paper reviews the developments leading up to that event, its implications, and prospects ...
Working Paper
The IMF in a world of private capital markets
The IMF attempts to stabilize private capital flows to emerging markets by providing public monitoring and emergency finance. In analyzing its role we contrast cases where banks and bondholders do the lending. Banks have a natural advantage in monitoring and creditor coordination, while bonds have superior risk sharing characteristics. Consistent with this assumption, banks reduce spreads as they obtain more information through repeat transactions with borrowers. By comparison, repeat borrowing has little influence in bond markets, where publicly-available information dominates. But spreads ...
Conference Paper
How foreign participation and market concentration impact bank spreads: evidence from Latin America
Increasing foreign participation and high concentration levels characterize the recent evolution of banking sectors' market structures in developing countries. We analyze the impact of these factors on Latin American bank spreads during the late 1990s. Our results suggest that foreign banks were able to charge lower spreads relative to domestic banks. This was more so for de novo foreign banks than for those that entered through acquisitions. The overall level of foreign bank participation seemed to influence spreads indirectly, primarily through its effect on administrative costs. Bank ...