The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) regional securities market saw increasing activity in the last decade, but still fell short of supplying sufficient long-term financing for growth-enhancing public and private investment projects. In addition to providing an institutional...

This paper examines the usefulness of asset prices in predicting recessions in the G-7 countries. It finds that asset price drops are significantly associated with the beginning of a recession in these countries. In particular, the marginal effect of an equity/house price drop on the likelihood...

A cross-country comparative analysis shows that there is substantial room for further integration of China into global financial markets, especially in the case of the international bond market. A further successful liberalization of the Chinese bond market would encompass not only loosening...

This paper constructs a financial conditions index for Poland to explore the link between financial conditions and real economic activity. The index in constructed by applying two complementary approaches — factor analysis and vector auto-regression approach. We evaluate the index's...

This paper examines the evolving importance of common global components underlying domestic financial conditions. It develops financial conditions indices (FCIs) that make it possible to compare a large set of advanced and emerging market economies. It finds that a common component, 'global...

This study quantifies the importance of a Global Financial Cycle (GFCy) for capital flows. We use capital flow data dis-aggregated by direction and type between 1990Q1 and 2015Q5 for 85 countries, and conventional techniques, models and metrics. Since the GFCy is an unobservable concept, we use...

We examine economic convergence among euro area countries on multiple dimensions. While there was nominal convergence of inflation and interest rates, real convergence of per capita income levels has not occurred among the original euro area members since the advent of the common currency....

This paper studies the transmission of bank capital shocks to loan supply in Indonesia. A series of theoretically founded dynamic panel data models are estimated and find nonlinear effects of capital on loan growth: the response of weaker banks to changes in their capital positions is larger...

Forward-looking monetary policy communication has become a key element of flexible inflation-targeting regimes across advanced and emerging market economies. The Reserve Bank of India’s implementation of a flexible inflation targeting framework since 2016 has been supported by a broad set of...

Capital markets in the East African Community (EAC) face common challenges of low capitalization and liquidity, but to different degrees. EAC member countries have made noticeable progress in developing domestic capital markets through a regional approach, removing constraints on capital...