We consider public debt from a long-term historical perspective, showing how the purposes for which governments borrow have evolved over time. Periods when debt-to-GDP ratios rose explosively as a result of wars, depressions and financial crises also have a long history. Many of these episodes...

This paper takes stock of the evolution of the international monetary system over the last thousand years. Several points stand out from the analysis. One is the reluctance of governments to embrace radical changes in international monetary relations. Another is the conflict between external and...

We document a decline in the dollar share of international reserves since the turn of the century. This decline reflects active portfolio diversification by central bank reserve managers; it is not a byproduct of changes in exchange rates and interest rates, of reserve accumulation by a small...

We review the debate on the association of financial globalization with inequality. We show that the within-country distributional impact of capital account liberalization is context specific and that different types of flows have different distributional effects. Their overall impact depends on...

After moving slowly downward for the better part of four decades, central bank gold holdings have risen since the Global Financial Crisis. We identify 14 “active diversifiers,” defined as countries that purchased gold and raised its share in total reserves by at least 5 percentage points...

This paper introduces the concept of the financial possibility frontier as a constrained optimum level of financial development to gauge the relative performance of financial systems across the globe. This frontier takes into account structural country characteristics, institutional, and...