This paper presents a simple heuristic measure of tail risk, which is applied to individual bank stress tests and to public debt. Stress testing can be seen as a first order test of the level of potential negative outcomes in response to tail shocks. However, the results of stress testing can be...

This paper investigates the effects of national culture on firm risk-taking, using a comprehensive dataset covering 50,000 firms in 400 industries in 51 countries. Risk-taking is found to be higher for domestic firms in countries with low uncertainty aversion, low tolerance for hierarchical...

Failures in the crypto space-including the fall of Terra USD and the FTX debacle-have sparked calls for strengthening countries' policy frameworks for crypto assets, including by enhanced regulation and supervision. How have these heightened concerns about crypto assets been picked up in...

This paper evaluates the global economic consequences of physical climate risks under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP 1-2.6 and SSP 2-4.5) using firm-level evidence. Firstly, we estimate the historical sectoral productivity changes from chronic climate risks (gradual changes in...

This paper explores the financial stability implications of acute physical climate change risks using a novel approach that focuses on a severe season associated with a sequence of tropical cyclone and flood events. Our approach was recently applied to study physical risks in the Mexican...

Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to the world economy and the global financial system. This paper sets out to understand and quantify the impact of climate mitigation, with a focus on climate-related news, which represents an important information source that investors use to...

Bank stress tests of climate change risks are relatively new, but are rapidly proliferating. The IMF and World Bank staff collaborated to develop an experimental macro scenario stress testing approach to examine physical risks for banks by building a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model...

We estimate the role of (pre-Ukraine war) supply disruptions in constraining the Covid-19 pandemic recovery, for several advanced economies and emerging markets, and globally. We rely on two approaches. In the first approach, we use sign-restricted Vector Auto Regressions (SVAR) to identify...

Fintech payments leverage large digital platforms to fill gaps in the traditional payment system. They have made great strides in increasing access to payment services in several countries around the globe. At the same time, like any innovation, the new payment models are exposed to risks in...

Liberia is facing large infrastructure gaps and developmental needs that constrain the country’s growth potential. The government has set an ambitious agenda to transform the economy and to reach middle-income country status by 2030 by scaling up investment in infrastructure and human capital....