Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

This paper presents evidence on the relative importance of alternative contagion channels during the Thai, Russian, and Brazilian crises. Results show that when crises are measured by changes in sovereign bond spreads, financial competition seems to explain almost all contagion episodes....

This paper seeks to draw lessons from the IMF’s experience in handling financial crises around the globe over the past ten years that are relevant to the challenges faced by countries in Latin America, especially in the wake of the recent crisis in Argentina. Experience suggests that...

This Selected Issues paper for Thailand highlights the effect of higher global interest rates on Thailand and the relationship between financial crises and long-term potential growth. Since the Asian crisis, Thailand has adopted an inflation targeting regime, and has intervened in the foreign...

This paper provides a brief historical journey of central banking in Latin America to shed light on the debate about monetary policy in the post-global financial crisis period. The paper distinguishes three periods in Latin America’s central bank history: the early years, when central...

This paper investigates the impact of the new capital requirements introduced under the Basel III framework on bank lending rates and loan growth. Higher capital requirements, by raising banks’ marginal cost of funding, lead to higher lending rates. The data presented in the paper suggest...

We identify current challenges for creating stable, yet efficient financial systems using lessons from recent and past crises. Reforms need to start from three tenets: adopting a system-wide perspective explicitly aimed at addressing market failures; understanding and incorporating into...

This paper finds that tightening global financial conditions can worsen emerging economies’ public debt dynamics through an increasing interest rate-growth differential, particularly if coupled with high global risk aversion. Latin America and emerging Europe are the regions most likely...

This study examines the challenges and issues facing policymakers in highly dollarized economies. Focusing on Cambodia, which achieved almost complete dollarization during 1991-95, the authors review recent developments in the literature on dollarization and examine the costs and benefits of...

This paper assesses the benefits and risks associated with dollarization of the banking system. We provide novel empirical evidence on the determinants of dollarization, its role in promoting financial development, and on whether dollarization is associated with financial instability. We find...