This paper links the current sub-prime mortgage crisis to a decline in lending standards associated with the rapid expansion of this market. We show that lending standards declined more in areas that experienced larger credit booms and house price increases. We also find that the underlying...

The global financial system has shown remarkable resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a sharp decline in economic activity and the initial financial market upheaval in March 2020. This paper takes stock of the factors that contributed to this resilience, focusing on the role of...

We use a new, comprehensive data set on the sovereign debt investor base to document three novel empirical facts: (i) sovereign debt is repatriated - that is, shifted from external private to domestic investors - prior to sovereign defaults; (ii) not all crises are equal: evidence for...

Consider two views of the global financial crisis. One view looks across the border: it blames external imbalances, the unprecedented current account deficits and surpluses in recent years. Another view looks within the border: it faults domestic financial systems where risks originated in...

Italy’s deep-rooted structural problems resulted in an unsatisfactory productivity performance and a dismal growth over the last 15 years. The global financial crisis has exacerbated these long-standing weaknesses, taking a heavy toll on Italy’s economy. With output back to its...

This paper uses the Shapley Value decomposition technique to assess the factors behind the rise of inequality in China. It finds that, in many ways, inequality may have been an inevitable by-product of China’s investment and export-led growth model. Between Chinese households, we find that the...

This paper studies structural changes underlying China's remarkable and unprecedented growth in recent years. While patterns of structural transformation across China's provinces are broadly in line with international experience, one important difference is in labor productivity differentials...

Even after one of the most severe multi-year crises on record in the advanced economies, the received wisdom in policy circles clings to the notion that high-income countries are completely different from their emerging market counterparts. The current phase of the official policy approach is...

We examine whether the cross-country incidence and severity of the 2008-2009 global recession is systematically related to pre-crisis macroeconomic and financial factors. We find that the pre-crisis level of development, increases in the ratio of private credit to GDP, current account deficits,...