This paper discusses fiscal surveillance criteria for the countries of the Central African Monetary and Economic Union (CEMAC), most of which depend heavily on oil exports. At present, the CEMAC''s macroeconomic surveillance exercise sets as fiscal target a floor on the basic budgetary balance....

High oil prices have once again led to large external surpluses of oil exporting countries, similar to the 1970s and 1980s. This paper analyzes the extent to which (i) oil exporters use bank deposits to invest these surpluses, and (ii) banks are lending on these funds to emerging market...

In the early 1870s, the global monetary system transitioned from bimetallism-a regime in which gold and silver currencies were tied at quasi-fixed exhange ratios-to the gold standard that was characterized by the use of (only) gold as the main currency metal by the largest and most advanced...

We employ an extended version of the Allen et al. (2002) Balance Sheet Approach to examine macroeconomic vulnerabilities in Colombia between 1996 and 2003, based on an unusually rich data set. We find that vulnerabilities existing prior to Colombia's 1999 recession - high levels of private debt,...

This paper discusses fiscal surveillance criteria for the countries of the Central African Monetary and Economic Union (CEMAC), most of which depend heavily on oil exports. At present, the CEMAC`s macroeconomic surveillance exercise sets as fiscal target a floor on the basic budgetary balance....

In 1871-73, newly unified Germany adopted the gold standard, replacing the silver-based currencies that had been prevalent in most German states until then. The reform sparked a series of steps in other countries that ultimately ended global bimetallism, i.e., a near-universal fixed exchange...