This paper focuses on the debt build-up that frontier low-income developing countries (LIDCs) have faced since 2012. First, it documents a 20-percentage point increase in the external and government debt-to-GDP ratios, a composition shift toward higher non-concessional debt, and a rise in...

We construct a new, comprehensive instrument-level database of sovereign debt for 18 advanced and emerging countries over the period 1913-46. The database contains data on amounts outstanding for some 3,800 individual debt instruments as well as associated qualitative information, including...

This paper explains why EMU countries seem unable or unwilling to undertake structural reforms of public expenditure. One of the reasons is political. What public expenditure reforms might be pursued without changing the political system? Without political reforms, technical improvements made to...

Under a monetary dominant (MD) regime, the primary surplus adjusts to limit debt growth, permitting monetary policy to be conducted independently of fiscal financing requirements. In Brazil, some evidence favors an MD regime for 1995-97, but not for the decade of the 1990s as a whole. While...

Estimates of the natural interest rate are often useful in the analysis of monetary and other macroeconomic policies. The topic gathered much attention following the great financial crisis and the Euro Area debt crisis due to the uncertainty regarding the timing of monetary policy normalization...

This paper revisits the issue of cross-country spillovers from fiscal consolidations using an innovative empirical methodology. We find evidence in support of fiscal spillovers in 10 euro area countries. Fiscal consolidation in one country not only reduces domestic output (direct effect), but...

Central banks in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) have been modernizing their monetary policy frameworks, often moving toward inflation targeting (IT). However, questions regarding the strength of monetary policy transmission from interest rates to inflation and output have often...

This paper is the first attempt to look at inflation dynamics and monetary transmission mechanisms in Armenia in the context of a full information model containing three interrelated markets: foreign exchange, money, and labor. Using the vector error correction model (VECM) approach, we find...

We show that macroprudential regulation can considerably dampen the impact of globalfinancial shocks on emerging markets. More specifically, a tighter level of regulation reducesthe sensitivity of GDP growth to VIX movements and capital flow shocks. A broad set ofmacroprudential tools contribute...

The 1990s currency debacles revitalized the search for early warning and forward-looking indicators of financial vulnerabilities. This paper contributes to this task by proposing an approach to assess central bank solvency and to examine the factors putting it at risk, and by refining the...