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...