This paper presents the theoretical structure of MAPMOD, a new IMF model designed to study vulnerabilities associated with excessive credit expansions, and to support macroprudential policy analysis. In MAPMOD, bank loans create purchasing power that facilitates adjustments in the real economy....

This paper, together with a technical companion paper, presents MAPMOD, a new IMF model designed to study vulnerabilities associated with excessive credit expansions, and to support macroprudential policy analysis. In MAPMOD, bank loans create purchasing power that facilitates adjustments in the...

The paper proposes a simple, new, analytical framework for assessing the cost and benefits of macroprudential policies. It proposes a measure of net benefits in terms of parameters that can be estimated: the probability of crisis, the loss in output given crisis, policy effectiveness in bringing...

Despite growing interest among policymakers, there is no theory of independent fiscal institutions. The emerging literature on "fiscal councils" typically makes informal parallels with the theory of central bank independence, but a very simple formal example shows that such a shortcut is flawed....

This paper develops a full-fledged cost-benefit analysis of monetary integration, and applies it to the currency unions actively pursued in Africa. The benefits of monetary union come from a more credible monetary policy, while the costs derive from real shock asymmetries and fiscal disparities....

We develop a multicountry model in which governments aim at excessive spending in order to serve the narrow interests of the group in power. This puts pressure on the monetary authorities to extract seigniorage, and thus affects the incentives countries would have to participate in a monetary...

The key policy challenge for Turkey in the years ahead will be to enhance and consolidate the advances made since the nation’s 2000-01 economic crisis. Higher growth could reduce unemployment and raise living standards toward European Union levels. This paper reviews Turkey’s...

This paper outlines a simple approach for incorporating extraneous predictions into structural models. The method allows the forecaster to combine predictions derived from any source in a way that is consistent with the underlying structure of the model. The method is flexible enough that...

The paper examines the joint impact of inflation targeting (IT) and fiscal rules (FR) on fiscal behavior and inflation in a broad panel of advanced and developing economies over the period 1990-2009. The main contribution of the paper is to show that, as suggested by the theoretical literature,...

This paper proposes a novel way of formulating priors for estimating economic models. System priors are priors about the model's features and behavior as a system, such as the sacrifice ratio or the maximum duration of response of inflation to a particular shock, for instance. System priors...