The events of the past six months have demonstrated the fragility of the global financial system and raised fundamental questions about the effectiveness of the response by private and public sector institutions. The report assesses the vulnerabilities that the system is facing and offers...

This paper provides a quantitative exploration of international spillovers of macroeconomic shocks among the major industrial economies. The particular topical example analyzed here concerns the possible effects on the industrial economies of adverse shocks to the current U.S. economic...

Globally, financial institutions have increased their holdings of domestic sovereign debt, tightening the linkage between the health of the financial system and the level of sovereign debt, or the "financial sector-sovereign nexus," during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In South Africa, the...

This paper investigates the impact of commodity price shocks on financial sector fragility. Using a large sample of 71 commodity exporters among emerging and developing economies, it shows that negative shocks to commodity prices tend to weaken the financial sector, with larger shocks having...

Why do commodity-dependent developing countries have typically lower levels of financial development than their peers? The literature has proposed many possible explanations, but it typically does not dwell on the deep mechanisms that drive such an outcome. In this paper, we argue that the main...

High household wealth is often cited as a key strength of the Italian economy. Both in absolute terms and relative to income, the Italian household sector is wealthier than most euro area peers. A sizable fraction of this wealth is held by the rich and upper middle classes. This paper documents...

Despite ongoing economic recovery and improvements in global financial stability, structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities remain in some important financial systems. The April 2011 Global Financial Stability Report highlights how risks have changed over the past six months, traces the sources...

This paper presents a stylized analysis of the effects of ring-fencing (i.e., different restrictions on cross-border transfers of excess profits and/or capital between a parent bank and its subsidiaries located in different jurisdictions) on cross-border banks. Using a sample of 25 large...