This paper follows up on the Executive Board's December 2002 discussion of the design of the Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism and seeks to make further progress on the formulation of a concrete proposal for a statutory sovereign debt restructuring mechanism

Seychelles's strong stabilization efforts has helped the economy to overcome debt crisis and global recession under the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). But the authorities need to address monetary policy trade-offs, and financial sector challenges exist. Executive Directors welcomed Seychelles's...

The 2012 Article IV Consultation reports that Iceland’s fiscal consolidation is continuing, but at a slower pace. Moderate expenditure overruns materialized in 2011, which will partly spill over to 2012 and the medium term. A key priority is to put the medium-term fiscal path back on...

In the past decade, most of the EU New Member States experienced a severe credit-boom bust cycle. This paper argues that the credit boom-bust cycle was to a large extent the result of factors external to the region (“bad luck”). Rapid credit growth followed from a high liquidity in global...

To test the role of bank lending in transmitting currency crisis we examine a panel of BIS data on bank flows to 30 emerging markets disaggregated by 11 banking centers. We find that bank exposures to a crisis country help predict bank flows in third countries after the Mexican and Asian crisis,...

Recoveries that occur in the absence of credit growth are often dubbed miracles and named after mythical creatures. Yet these are not rare animals, and are not always miracles. About one out of five recoveries is "creditless", and average growth during these episodes is about a third lower than...

The Czech financial system is confronted with mounting risks that stem mainly from negative developments in the European Union (EU). This technical note focuses on crisis management and bank resolution framework for the Czech Republic. It summarizes the high-level observations of the mission...

Did the occurrence of systemic banking crises in the 1990s and 2000s significantly alter the behavior of banks in the Mercosur? The objective of this paper is to answer this question by analyzing changes in bank behavior after crises in the Mercosur region. To our knowledge, this is the first...