With global supply chains, any value added or production task can be traded as part of goods. This means that competitiveness can be measured either in terms of “tasks” (Bems and Johnson, 2012), or goods, but with goods prices reflecting the cost of tasks embedded in those goods. We show...

This paper assesses the effect of constrained trade finance on trade flows in countries undergoing financial and balance of payments crises. Most of the countries that had a major crisis had a significant trade contraction, while trade-related finance declined sharply. However, trade may also be...

This paper assesses the extent to which Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)'s business cycle is synchronized with that of the rest of the world (RoW). Findings suggest that SSA's business cycle has not only moved in the same direction as that of the RoW, but has also gradually drifted away from the G7 in...

This paper uses multivariate dynamic panel analysis to examine the response of international financial flows to natural disasters. The models estimated for a large sample of developing countries point to differentiated responses of specific types of financial flows. The results show that...

Declining but still high dollarization rates in the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) region affect macroeconomic stability, monetary policy transmission, and financial sector development. Although several studies have investigated the dynamics of dollarization in the CCA, the relative roles of...

The COVID-19 pandemic led many emerging market central banks to adopt, for the first time, unconventional policies in the form of asset purchase programs. In this study, we analyze the effects of these announcements on domestic financial markets using both event studies and local projections...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This systemic risk like no other at a time of record-breaking debt levels, especially among nonfinancial firms across the world, could exacerbate corporate vulnerabilities, deepen macro-financial...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess the likely evolution of nonfinancial corporate performance going forward, this paper investigates empirically the impact of past pandemics using firm-level data on more than 537,000 companies...

This paper explores inflation dynamics and monetary policy in Bolivia. Bolivia's monetary policy framework has been effective in stabilizing inflation in recent times. This has been a challenging task given high price volatility of key consumer goods subject to recurrent supply shocks,...

This paper overviews patterns in bond issuance in local and external markets by firms in six large Latin American countries. Data suggest that despite rising issuance, local markets remain small and shallow in several countries. Nevertheless, since greater funding is available to many firms in...