This paper documents the phenomenon of underpricing initial public offerings (IPOs) for 47 firms that went public between 2001 and 2006 in the equity markets of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The average initial abnormal returns of 290 percent exceed those found in the...

The sensitivity of secondary sovereign loan market returns to three classes of economic news is estimated in the arbitrage pricing theory framework. Returns are characterized by a limited response to unexpected changes in procyclical U.S. aggregates. Shocks to country-specific balance of payment...

This study characterizes volatility dynamics in external emerging bond markets and examines how prices and volatility respond to news about macroeconomic fundamentals. As in mature bond markets, macroeconomic surprises in external emerging bond markets are found to a¤ect both conditional...

Observers have often characterized asset markets as being subject to periods of tranquility and periods of turbulence. Until recently, however, researchers were unable to produce closed-form asset pricing formulas in a model environment of time-varying risk. Some work by Abel provided us with...

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the real exchange rate and the price of equity for a small open economy using an optimizing model in which the process of capital accumulation entails adjustment costs. The analysis demonstrates that along an adjustment path toward long-run equilibrium,...

The 2011 Article IV Consultation report concludes that Belize has weathered the financial crisis relatively well when compared with Caribbean Community peers. Executive Directors have commended the authorities for their macroeconomic management, which enabled Belize to weather the financial...

This paper reviews economic developments in the United Kingdom during 1991–96. The paper examines two sets of possible reasons why the United Kingdom's savings and investment rates are lower than elsewhere. The first consists of factors leading to lower optimal rates of savings and investment:...

This paper reviews economic developments in the United Kingdom during 1991–95. Following a brisk expansion in 1994, when the economy achieved a rare combination of above-trend output growth and historically low inflation, the pace of economic activity in the United Kingdom has moderated in the...

This paper reviews the first five years’ experience with inflation targeting in the United Kingdom. It concludes that inflation performance was not significantly different under inflation targeting than predicted by a VAR model estimated in the period prior to participation in the exchange...

This Selected Issues paper examines the operational independence and the conduct of monetary policy in the United Kingdom. The paper describes the inflation targeting framework and the analytics of the decision-making process. It suggests that inflation targeting, although not entirely new in...