This paper presents two approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or a permanent phenomenon. The two approaches-the time series behavior of credit outstanding and a two-stage program selection and access...

We propose and implement a framework for characterizing and monitoring the global business cycle. Our framework utilizes high-frequency data, allows us to account for a potentially large amount of missing observations, and is designed to facilitate the updating of global activity estimates as...