This paper assesses implementation of the International Organization of Securities Commissions' (IOSCO) objectives and principles of securities regulation in Spain. Spain exhibits a high level of implementation of principles. The legal framework is robust and provides the Comisión Nacional de...

The Chinese authorities welcomed the spillover analysis, noting that their policies have important global spillover effects. The note also discusses China’s evolving role in global trade, impact of rebalancing on the supply chain, estimating China’s spillovers, elasticities...

Real GDP growth for 2010 has been revised upward to 6.3 percent, and annual CPI inflation has increased to about 10 percent. End-December performance criteria (PC) are expected to be met, with the exception of the fiscal deficit and general government expenditure targets owing to the late...

Using firm-level data for Estonia for the years 1997-2005, we analyze the impact of international competition on firm dynamics, considering both firm closedown and product switching. We contribute to the literature in two important ways: (1) this is the first paper to study the determinants of...

Expansionary monetary policies in key industrial countries and sharply depreciating U.S. dollar exchange rate sent commodities prices soaring at unprecedented rates during 2003-2007. Food prices rose to alarming levels threatening malnutrition and food riots. In contrast, consumer price indices,...

Recent turmoil in financial and commodities markets has renewed questions regarding how well markets discover equilibrium prices, particularly when those markets are highly complex. A relatively new critique questions whether markets can realistically find equilibrium prices if computers cannot....

We assess the spot price forecasting performance of 10 commodity futures at various horizons up to two years and test whether this performance is affected by market conditions. We reject efficient markets based on in-sample tests but, out-of-sample, we find that the forecast from the futures...

Containing inflation has turned out to be one of the most challenging aspects of economic management in Iraq. This paper posits that conventional as well as unconventional factors explain inflation dynamics in the recent past. We build a theoretical model based on the insights into the workings...

The macroeconomic effects of large food price swings can be broad and far-reaching, including the balance of payments of importers and exporters, budgets, inflation, and poverty. For market participants and policymakers, managing low frequency volatility—i.e., the component of volatility...

Fiscal performance in Latin America looks much improved this decade compared to the 1980s or 1990s. Is this a "structural" improvement or likely to be transitory? This paper answers this question by estimating the relationship between non-commodity revenue and the economic cycle, and evaluating...