The papers in this volume were presented at three invited sessions at the annual meeting of the Western Economic Association in Lake Tahoe, Nevada on June 30 and July 1, 1998. The comments of the speaker at each of these sessions are also included. The papers focus on the widespread banking and financial crises that have plagued many countries worldwide. A study by the International Monetary Fund (Lindgren, Garcia, & Saal, 1996) reported that banking crises had been experienced by nearly three-quarters of its 180-plus member countries since 1980. And this was before the current problems in...

Contemporary Studies in Economic and Financial Analysis provides further insights to postcrisis developments in the global economic and financial environment. Our hope is that the assembled papers will offer clear insights into the complex financial arrangements that now link emerging and developed financial markets in the current economic environment, outlining a multidisciplinary research agenda for the field.

It has become increasingly evident in recent years that the safe and the efficient operation of the banking system cannot be guaranteed by Government regulation and supervisory review alone, regardless of how conscientious the regulator, or well-intended the regulations. Government regulation needs to be supplemented by market discipline. Market discipline requires the existence of at least some "de-facto at-risk" bank stakeholders, who have an incentive both to monitor the financial performance of the banks and to take action to influence bank management if they find performance...