This paper discusses the use of interest rates as the operating target for monetary policy in Tunisia and the roadmap for establishing the other building blocks of an inflation targeting framework. It argues that strengthening the effectiveness of the current monetary policy framework will...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. INTEREST RATES AND BUSINESS CYCLES -- III. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY MODEL WITH THE FINANCIAL ACCELERATOR -- IV. THE EFFECTS OF A 1 PERCENT U.S. INTEREST RATE HIKE -- V. A REPEAT OF THE GLOBAL BOND MARKET ROUT OF 1994? -- VI. WHAT ROLE FOR MONETARY POLICY? --...

This paper assesses the state and resilience of corporate and banking sectors in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in a "higher-for-longer" interest rate environment using granular micro data to conduct the first cross-country corporate and banking sector stress tests for the MENA region....

The extent to which changes in monetary policy rates lead to changes in loan and deposit rates for households and firms, referred to as 'pass-through', is an important ingredient of monetary policy transmission to output and prices. Using data on seven different bank interest rates in 30...

We present evidence of a risk-taking channel of monetary policy for the U.S. banking system. We use confidential data on the internal ratings of U.S. banks on loans to businesses over the period 1997 to 2011 from the Federal Reserve's survey of terms of business lending. We find that ex-ante...

The fall in the U.S. public debt/GDP ratio from 106% in 1946 to 23% in 1974 is often attributed to high rates of economic growth. This paper examines the roles of three other factors: primary budget surpluses, surprise inflation, and pegged interest rates before the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951....

This paper investigates the effects of climate shocks on inflation and monetary policy in the Middle East and Central Asia (ME&CA) region. We first introduce a theoretical model to understand the impact of climate risks on headline and food inflation. In particular, the model shows how climate...

We examine how the cost of corporate credit varies around fiscal consolidations aimed at reducing government debt. Using a new dataset on fiscal consolidations and syndicated corporate loan data, we find that loan spreads increase with fiscal consolidations, especially for small firms, domestic...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. TRENDS IN REGIONAL INVESTMENT6 -- III. LITERATURE REVIEW -- IV. A BASIC INVESTMENT MODEL -- V. DATA -- VI. ESTIMATION ISSUES -- VII. ESTIMATION RESULTS -- VIII. CONCLUSIONS -- References -- Data Sources and Estimates.

The economic debate underlines the reasons why discount rates of infrastructure projects should be similar, regardless the public or private source of financing, during the forecast period when flows are risky but predictable. In contrast, we show that the incompleteness of contracts between...