This paper surveys the foreign exchange markets, money and secondary government security markets, and stock exchanges in 107 smaller economy countries. The underdevelopment of these markets impedes risk transfer, monetary policy, corporate financing, and the capacity to absorb capital inflows....

The paper describes the evolution of the corporate stock and bond markets in Korea and the Government’s role in this evolution and its policy with regard to internationalization of the capital market. The paper analyzes problems encountered in gradually opening the Korean capital market to...

The paper argues that the endogenous behavior of monetary authorities provides an important channel through which fiscal policy influences financial variables, and that growing internationalization has increased the sensitivity of financial conditions to fiscal policy. The core of the argument...

This paper explores how banking sector developments and characteristics influence the propagation of risks from the banking sector to sovereign debt, including how they affect the extent of fiscal costs of banking crises when those occur. It then proposes practices and policies for the fiscal...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

This paper analyzes the economic determinants of developing country creditworthiness indicators for over 60 developing countries for the period from 1980 to 1993. Our results indicate that economic fundamentals--the ratio of non-gold foreign exchange reserves to imports, the ratio of the current...

This paper constructs and analyzes an optimizing model of a highly-indebted small open economy. An important innovation in the model is the incorporation of sovereign risk through the specification of an upward-sloping foreign debt supply function. The model is used to examine the interaction...

The staff report for the 2003 Article IV Consultation on Kuwait highlights the economic developments and policies. The macroeconomic position over the medium term under current oil price expectations and the maintenance of a cautious policy stance is projected to weaken, but is not expected to...

This 2004 Article IV Consultation highlights that economic activity has been gathering speed in Estonia. Year-over-year growth accelerated to 6.8 percent in 2004 Q1 from 5.8 percent in 2003 Q1, driven by domestic demand and supported by technology sector exports. Inflation accelerated in the...