We demonstrate empirically that not all capital flows influence exchange rates equally: Capital flows induced by foreign investors’ stock market transactions have both an economically significant and a permanent impact on exchange rates, whereas capital flows induced by foreign...

The structure of sovereign debt has evolved over time from illiquid bank loans toward liquid bonds that are traded on the secondary market in the past two decades. This change in the debt structure is accompanied with a reduction in the duration of sovereign debt renegotiation; it takes on...

This technical note focuses on fixed income markets for Thailand. The note recommends that Thailand should begin an orderly transition from merit-based regulation of corporate issuers and institutional investors to a disclosure-based regulatory system that opens the debt market to a larger and...

The effects of the IMF's data standards initiatives on sovereign borrowing costs in private capital markets are investigated for 26 emerging market and developing countries. Stable and significant panel econometric estimates indicate that subscription to the Special Data Dissemination Standard...

Singapore’s financial sector, which is dominated by the banking sector, remains robust despite a series of economic downturns and substantial asset price declines. Economic developments in the past few years have highlighted Singapore’s vulnerability to exogenous shocks, including...

Crises on external sovereign debt are typically defined as defaults. Such a definition accurately captures debt-servicing difficulties in the 1980s, a period of numerous defaults on bank loans. However, defining defaults as debt crises is problematic for the 1990s, when sovereign bond markets...

This paper investigates the determinants of the international role of a currency. It argues that standard determinants such as monetary performance and financial openness are at best imperfect indicators of a currency’s stability prospects, because the issuer’s promise of stability is not...