The establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at end-2015 has brought into sharp focus the issue of financial and economic integration in the region. This paper takes stock of ASEAN's financial integration and prospects. ASEAN integration could accelerate in the years ahead; it will...

Three years have passed since the Bank of Japan's asset purchase program was introduced in 2011, causing a sharp decline in the value of the Japanese Yen. What would be the implications for Japan and Korea's exporters if the weak Yen is here to stay? We explore this question by examining...

This paper explores the determinants of profitability across large euro area banks using a novel approach based on conditional profitability distributions. Real GDP growth and the NPL ratio are shown to be the most reliable determinants of bank profitability. However, the estimated conditional...

Drawing on the 2016 update of the IMF's Central Bank Legislation Database, this paper examines differences in central bank legal frameworks before and after the Global Financial Crisis. Examples from select countries show that many central bank laws have undergone changes in objectives,...

This paper describes how behavioral elements are relevant to financial supervision,regulation, and central banking. It focuses on (1) behavioral effects of norms (social, legal,and market); (2) behavior of others (internalization, identification, and compliance); and(3) psychological biases. It...

The constraints that external linkages impose on domestic policy choices in Saudi Arabia have continuously evolved over the past four decades. This paper argues that two major ongoing developments in particular have affected and will continue to affect policy trade-offs. First, growing oil needs...

The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed by the Economic Modeling Division of the IMF for policy analysis and international economic research. Using a 5-region version of the GIMF, this paper illustrates the model's...

This paper surveys dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with financial frictions in use by central banks and discusses priorities for future development of such models for the purpose of monetary and financial stability analysis. It highlights the need to develop macrofinancial models...