This paper looks at whether the tendency of some governments to borrow short term is reinforced by financial support from the International Monetary Fund. I first present a model of sovereign debt issuance at various maturities featuring endogenous liquidity crises and maturity mismatches due to...

Using empirical analysis, complemented with case studies, this paper studies under which circumstances IMF programs manage to catalyze private capital flows into the countries concerned. While we found no catalysis in general, the situation differs very much depending on the type of capital flow...

This paper proposes updating and improving the IMF’s lending mechanism, by replacing all of its credit lines with a single financial facility. Under this single facility, costs would rise with the volume drawn down and the time elapsed. At the same time, arrangement and repayment periods would...

This paper develops the "identified VAR" models of France and Spain with German monetary variables to identify monetary policy shocks during the period when the exchange rate is controlled mostly by the ERM. Different identifying assumptions on the contemporaneous policy interactions are...

In 2007, countries in the euro periphery were enjoying stable growth, low deficits and low spreads. Then the financial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recession, raising their deficits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and, surprisingly,...

This paper analyzes optimal monetary policy in a two-country model with asymmetric shocks. Agents insure against risk through the exchange of Arrow-Debreu securities. Although central banks commit to the policy that maximizes domestic welfare, this does not lead to price stability. In an attempt...

It has been emphasized that international promotion activities such as state visits or the presence of embassies, consulates and export promotion agencies help foster trade when there are search costs and/or uncertainty. In this paper we try to disentangle the differential effect that foreign...

This paper examines the growing relevance of emerging and developing economies for the global economy, paying special attention to the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The paper also reviews the participation of these countries in some key multilateral institutions for global governance,...

This paper explores the role of international reserves as a stabilizer of international capital flows during periods of global financial stress. In contrast with previous contributions, aimed at explaining net capital flows, we focus on the behavior of gross capital flows. We analyze an...

The paper tests whether there were events of contagion, and portfolio shift, in the sovereign bond markets of eleven emerging countries' between January 1995 and November 2001. From existing definitions, we narrow down the concept of contagion by focusing on pricing errors, after general market...