The original purpose of the former was to help post-World War II reconstruction, the purpose of the latter was to help revive global trade while averting the “beggar-thy-neighbor ” exchange rate policies that characterized the inter-war years. Over the years, the World Bank has refocused on helping poor countries grow while the Fund broadly attempts to foster country policies that ensure macroeconomic stability and limit adverse spillovers to the rest of the world. It still is in the world’s self interest to reduce poverty and economic instability in all countries, not just because their effects spread through trade but also because they can be sources of conflict and terrorism, of politically difficult immigration and of environmental degradation. But can multilateral financiers like the World Bank and the IMF help attain these goals? In the past, they contributed through loans and through economic advice, with the former being the lever through which multilateral institutions forced countries to accept the latter. Over the years, the value of both contributions has eroded, as I will discuss. Multilateral institutions will have to change, doing old tasks in new ways as also performing new tasks such as slowing climate change. Critical to their transformation will be the attitudes of the countries that play the largest role in their governance. These then are the subject of the rest of the paper.

While the benefits of bank financing are relatively well understood, the costs are not. This paper argues that while informed banks make flexible financial decisions which prevent a firm's projects from going awry, the cost of this credit is that banks have bargaining power over the firm's profits, once projects have begun. The firm's portfolio choice of borrowing source and the choice of priority for its debt claims attempt to optimally circumscribe the powers of banks.

A widespread view is that executive perks exemplify agency problems—they are a route through which managers misappropriate a firm's surplus. Accordingly, firms with high free cash flow, operating in industries with limited investment prospects, should offer more perks, and firms subject to more external monitoring should offer fewer perks. The evidence for agency as an explanation of perks is, at best, mixed. Perks are, however, offered in situations in which they enhance managerial productivity. While we cannot rule out the occasional aberration, and while we have little to say on the overall level of perks, our findings suggest that treating perks purely as managerial excess is incorrect.

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms, we find that firm hierarchies are becoming flatter. The number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up significantly over time while the number of levels between the division heads and the CEO has decreased. More of these managers now report directly to the CEO and more are being appointed officers of the firm, reflecting a delegation of authority. Moreover, division managers who move closer to the CEO receive higher pay and greater long-term incentives, suggesting that all this is not simply a change in organizational charts with no real consequences. Importantly, flattening cannot be characterized simply as centralization or decentralization. We discuss several possible explanations that may account for some of these changes. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Using differences in regulation as a means of identification, we find that a reduction in local financial intermediation capacity reduces the recovery rates on assets of failing banks. It also depresses local land prices and is associated with subsequent distress in nearby banks. Fire sales appear to be one channel through which lower local intermediation capacity reduces the recovery rates on failed banks’ assets. The paper provides a rationale for why bank failures are contagious, and why the value of specialized financial assets could depend on the size of the intermediary market that is available to buy it.

The state of development of the financial sector does not change monotonically over time. In particular, by most measures, countries were more financially developed in 1913 than in 1980 and only recently have they surpassed their 1913 levels. To explain these changes, we propose an interest group theory of financial development where incumbents oppose financial development because it breeds competition. The theory predicts that incumbents’ opposition will be weaker when an economy allows both cross-border trade and capital flows. This theory can go some way in accounting for the cross-country differences in, and the time-series variation of, financial development.

We examine the effects of aid on growth in cross-sectional and panel data—after correcting for the possible bias that poorer (or stronger) growth may draw aid contributions to recipient countries. Even after this correction, we find little robust evidence of a positive (or negative) relationship between aid inflows into a country and its economic growth. We also find no evidence that aid works better in better policy or geographical environments, or that certain forms of aid work better than others. Our findings suggest that for aid to be effective in the future, the aid apparatus will have to be rethought.