How does sovereign debt emerge? In the early nineteenth century, intermediaries' market
power and prestige served to overcome information asymmetries. Relying on insights from …

In the past 20 years, dedicated research efforts have helped us expand our knowledge of
how the international financial system operates. Because the emergence of global finance is …

The world was wild for gold. After discovering the Americas, and under pressure to defend
their vast dominion, the Habsburgs of Spain promoted gold and silver exploration in the New …

This chapter argues that, since the 1980s, moral hazard has encouraged excessive
indebtedness and contributed to greater leniency from regulators and financial gatekeepers …

The literature on whether executive constraint improves the credibility of sovereign debt
takes the political regime as the unit of analysis, typically computing an average yield or …

The claim that lawyers act as gatekeepers or certifiers in financial transactions is widely
discussed in the legal literature. There has, however, been little empirical examination of the …

Since 2003, the battle between holdout creditors and the Argentine government in US courts
has inspired a number of judicious studies on its legal underpinnings and repercussions. It …

This article assesses how the government of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1910) negotiated
sovereign loans. Mexico was a serial defaulter that established a good reputation and …

Does financial globalization lead to contagion? We scrutinize linkages between
international stock markets in a long historical perspective (1880-2014). Our results highlight …

The classical gold standard period, 1880-1913, witnessed deep economic integration. High
capital imports were related to better growth performance but may also have created greater …