We review the impact of the global financial crisis, and its consequences for the sovereign sector of the euro area, on the international “rules of the game” for dealing with sovereign debt crises. These rules rest on two main pillars. The most important is the IMF's lending framework...

European economic governance is again under the spotlight. Several reform proposals have been put forward in recent years, including new arrangements for the management and resolution of sovereign debt crises. This note purports to: (a) critically review earlier debates on the reform of the...

The economic and political influence of China in the Asia-Pacific region is growing and the internationalization of the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB), is adding an additional channel of influence. This paper assesses the evolution of exchange rate co-movements against the US dollar within...

This paper studies the sudden stop in capital flows that emerging markets experienced throughout the first months of the pandemic. First, we find that the sudden stop in capital flows was strongly affected by lower portfolio investments by non-bank financial intermediaries: for many emerging...

Following the establishment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), concerns about having a level playing field become more important due to the heterogeneity in bank taxation rules across Europe: measuring the tax burden can provide a first rough measure of the extent of heterogeneity across...

This paper assesses empirically the effectiveness of the IMF as a component of the Global Financial Safety Net by running a panel regression on a sample of emerging market countries' sovereign spreads. In particular, we check if the size of the Fund's lending capacity and the introduction of the...

Financial globalisation brings a number of benefits but can also increase the risk of financial crisis. In recent years, to reduce these risks to stability, countries have reformed financial regulation, enhanced frameworks for central bank liquidity provision and developed new elements, and...

This work examines how much of the variation in emerging market economies' (EMEs) spreads can be ascribed to 'country-specific' factors rather than to 'common' factors, once the existence of an interaction between the state of macroeconomic fundamentals and global financial conditions is...

This paper is a case study of an (almost complete) adjustment of Italy's external stock imbalance. After reaching a peak of around 25 per cent of GDP in early 2014, Italy's net external debtor position has steadily decreased, reaching less than 7 per cent of GDP at the end of 2017. The...

We assess the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the financing capacity of the four major multilateral development banks (MDBs) specialized in sovereign lending (IBRD, ADB, IADB, AfDB), based on available capital buffers and while maintaining triple-A ratings. The capacity of MDBs to expand...