This paper analyzes common economic patterns across countries and economic sectors in Latin America, East Asia and Europe for the period 1970-94 by means of an error-components model that decomposes real value added growth in each country into common international effects, sector-specific...

The sizable hoarding of international reserves by several East Asian countries has been frequently attributed to a modern version of monetary mercantilism - hoarding international reserves in order to improve competitiveness. From a long-run perspective, manufacturing exporters in East Asia...

After the large exchange rate depreciations following the 1997 East Asian crisis, export volumes from East Asian countries responded with a notable lag. Two main explanations for this lag have been proposed: that the policy of high interest rates limited access to domestic credit and hence...

In emerging Asia, banks constitute the dominant source of financing consumption and investment, and bank balance sheets comprise large gross FX assets and liabilities. This paper extends the DSGE model of Gertler and Karadi (2011) to incorporate these key features and estimates a panel vector...

We analyze determinants of sovereign bond yields in 22 advanced economies over the 1980-2010 period using panel cointegration techniques. The application of cointegration methodology allows distinguishing between long-run (debt-to-GDP ratio, potential growth) and short-run (inflation, short-term...

This paper studies tariff-tax reforms in a calibrated two-region global New Keynesian model composed of a developing and an advanced region. In our baseline calibration, a revenue-neutral reform that lowers tariffs in developing countries can reduce domestic welfare. The reason is that the...

Implementation of fiscal consolidation by advanced economies in coming years needs to take into account the short and long-run interactions between economic growth and fiscal policy. Many countries must reduce high public debt to GDP ratios that penalize longterm growth. However, fiscal...

The unprecedented collapse of international interbank borrowing was a prominent feature of the global financial crisis that started in August 2007. This paper focuses on the drivers of the retrenchment from 32 advanced and emerging banking systems. Using novel risk-weighted indexes the paper...

This paper asks how well Okun's Law fits short-run unemployment movements in the United States since 1948 and in twenty advanced economies since 1980. We find that Okun's Law is a strong and stable relationship in most countries, one that did not change substantiallyduring the Great Recession....

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across 18 advanced economies over the past 40 years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To address these...