The paper shows that a coinsurance arrangement among countries can, in principle, play a useful role in helping countries bear the risks involved in developing their economies and integrating into the global financial system. The operation of the coinsurance arrangement is examined under...

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need in situations where they must address issues concerning health sector policy and when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to...

This paper reviews the literature on the informal economy, focusing first on empirical findings and then on existing approaches to modeling informality within both partial and general equilibrium environments. We concentrate on labour and credit markets, since these tend to be most affected by...

As is well known, most models of credit risk have failed to measure the credit risks in the context of the global financial crisis. In this context, financial industry representatives, regulators and academics worldwide have given new impetus to efforts to improve credit risk modeling for...

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need to address issues concerning health sector policy, particularly when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to any strategy of...

Contingent liabilities have gained prominence in the analysis of public finance. Indeed, history is full of episodes in which the financial position of the public sector is substantially altered-or its true nature uncovered-as a result of government bailouts of financial or nonfinancial...

This paper analyzes how different types of bank funding affect the extent to which banks ration credit to borrowers, and the impact that capital requirements have on that rationing. Using an extension of the standard Stiglitz-Weiss model of credit rationing, unsecured wholesale finance is shown...

Why do many households remain exposed to large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? We use a series of randomized field experiments in rural India to test the importance of price and non-price factors in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product. Demand is...

The unprecedented collapse of international interbank borrowing was a prominent feature of the global financial crisis that started in August 2007. This paper focuses on the drivers of the retrenchment from 32 advanced and emerging banking systems. Using novel risk-weighted indexes the paper...