"Despite significant progress in economic reform throughout the 1990s and an exemplary development of the policymaking framework in the second part of the decade, Brazil suffered a major public debt and currency crisis in 2002. Though the political origin of the uncertainty cannot be ignored,...

"This paper examines the effects of inflation targeting on industrial and emerging economies' output growth over the "globalization years" of 1986-2004. Controlling for trade openness and two indicators of financial globalization, the authors find systematic positive and significant effects of...

Bulgaria has achieved impressive economic performance over the last two decades. Nevertheless, recent growth of gross domestic product (GDP) and productivity has slowed since the global financial crisis, and the country faces medium- to long-term labor shortages and skills mismatches driven by...

Nonperforming Loans (NPLs) in the banking system constituted 16.5 percent of total loans, owing primarily to the corporate sector. The Credit Bureau, maintained by the Association of Serbian Banks, also discloses dramatic increases in corporate and retail defaults over the past year. NPL...

"The authors study the effect of reorganization costs on the efficiency of bankruptcy laws. They develop a simple model that predicts that in a regime with high costs, the law fails to achieve the efficient outcome of liquidating unviable businesses and reorganizing viable ones. The authors test...