This paper analyzes the cyclical effects of bank capital requirements in a simple model with credit market imperfections. Lending rates are set as a premium over the cost of borrowing from the central bank, with the premium itself depending on firms’ effective collateral. Basel I- and Basel...

This paper provides an overview of the various channels through which public infrastructure may affect growth. In addition to the conventional productivity, complementarity, and crowding-out effects typically emphasized in the literature, the impact of infrastructure on investment adjustment...

This paper takes a hard look at the experience with official intervention in sovereign debt crises, focusing on debt crises of the 1980s, Russia in 1998, Argentina in 2001, and Greece in 2010. Based on the track record, the authors argue that in situations where countries face a solvency...

This note examines in detail Brazil's export performance over the past 15 years, focusing not only on growth and composition, but also on different performance dimensions, including diversification, sophistication, and firm dynamics. The analysis uses international comparisons to better situate...

Confidence in combining inflation-targeting-cum-flexible-exchange-rate regimes with isolated microprudential regulation as a means to guarantee both macroeconomic and financial stability has been shattered by the scale and synchronization of asset price booms and busts that preceded the current...

Although Brazil has become one of the largest economies in the world, it remains among the most closed economies as measured by the share of exports and imports in gross domestic product. This feature cannot be explained simply by the size of Brazil's economy. Rather, it is due to an economic...

"This paper analyzes the effects of monetary policy and fiscal adjustment on output and unemployment in Turkey. The model on which the analysis is based accounts for rural-urban migration, a large urban informal sector, flexible exchange rates, a dollarized banking system, and interactions...