The paper identifies France’s structural reforms that would yield the largest competitiveness gains based on macro-empirical evidence, and reviews signs of potential gains from a deregulation of the services sector. It is expected that completing deregulation in the services sector would...

The Financial System Stability Assessment of Morocco reviews the reform program that is aimed at establishing a modern, market-oriented financial system that optimizes the mobilization of savings and the allocation of financial resources. It reviews the modernization of the banking sector and...

The global financial crisis has highlighted the potential of financial conditions for influencing real economic activity. We examine the linkages between the financial and real sectors in the euro area, finding that (i) bank loan supply responds negatively to declines in bank soundness; (ii) a...

In light of the uncertainties about valuation highlighted by the 2007-2008 market turbulence, this paper provides an empirical examination of the potential procyclicality that fair value accounting (FVA) could introduce in bank balance sheets. The paper finds that, while weaknesses in the FVA...

This paper develops a two-country monetary DSGE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) model in which households choose a portfolio of home and foreign equities, and a forward position in foreign exchange. Some goods prices are set without full information of the state. Home and foreign...

This study presents a theory of financial infrastructure - or the set of rules, institutions, and systems within which agents carry out financial transactions. It investigates the effects of financial infrastructure development on financial architecture and real capital accumulation, taking into...

We examine the short- and long-run effects of financial liberalization on capital markets. To do so, we construct a new comprehensive chronology of financial liberalization in 28 mature and emerging market economies since 1973. We also construct an algorithm to identify booms and busts in stock...

This paper studies the participation and performance of sophisticated versus unsophisticated auction participants in an environment with numerous bidders, uncertainty, and asymmetric information. We examine multi-unit, pay-as-bid, currency auctions conducted by the Central Bank of Venezuela. We...