Linkages between the real and financial sectors in an economy can lead to a buildup of balance sheet mismatches of key entities-corporates, financial institutions, households, and the public sector. Once such imbalances have built up, they can make the economy vulnerable to macroeconomic shocks,...

Governments face growing contingent liabilities from disasters as they tend to shoulder a significant share of disaster response and recovery costs. Disaster shocks increase government expenditure and hamper economic activities. An increasing number of countries are developing financial...

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the 2009 global recession. Most emerging market and developing economies weathered the global recession relatively well. However, following a short-lived initial rebound in activity in 2010, the global economy and, especially, emerging market and...

Today, over 4 billion people around the world-more than half the global population-live in cities. By 2050, with the urban population more than doubling its current size, nearly 7 of 10 people in the world will live in cities. Evidence from today's developed countries and rapidly emerging...

The focus of the paper is on five key financial stability issues in Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), which have been selected on the basis of their degree of materiality for a reasonably broad range of EMDEs; their implications for regulatory, supervisory or other financial...

The paper is based on a scenario workshop held on January 20, 2009, where leading financial and private sector development experts from IFC, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank discussed the unfolding crisis. This paper is a product of the staff of the Financial and Private...

FYR Macedonia has experienced a decline in poverty in the post global financial crisis period (2009-2013) in spite of a weak macroeconomic performance. In contrast to the pre-crisis period when growth was robust but poverty stagnant, poverty indicators indicate an improvement on the living...

The crisis has surged across the public-private boundary, as the hit to private firms' balance sheets has now imposed heavy new demands on the public sector's finances. It has surged across national borders within the developed world, as the people of Iceland know all too well. And nowthere are...

In the fall of 2008, the Moroccan microfinance sector underwent what in economics is referred to as a Minsky moment, the sudden realization that the market has overshot and that the good times are coming to an end. In this particular case, the Minsky moment was a specific event - the private...

This note is part of the series of COVID-19 Notes developed by the World Bank Group's Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions (EFI) team. By highlighting concrete examples of insolvency and debt restructuring reforms undertaken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as past crises, this...