As the world economy slowly recovers from the very deep and widespread recession of recent years, many countries confront very serious fiscal imbalances. How much time they have to deal with these imbalances is a central question, the salience of which can only have been increased by the ongoing...

Emerging market firms frequently borrow in foreign currency (FX), but their assets are often denominated in domestic currency. This behavior leads to an FX mismatch on firms balance sheets, which can harm their net worth in the event of a depreciation. I use a large, unanticipated, and exogenous...