Limited access to finance is one of the main obstacles for firms located in the Western Balkans and hampers economic growth as well as the transmission of monetary policy. The aim of this paper is to undertake an in-depth analysis of access to finance constraints in this region, where countries...

The likely enlargement of euro-area membership will radically change the environment under which monetary policy will be made in the euro area. Within less than a decade, the number of member countries in the euro area could more than double, with the vast majority of accession countries being...

Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as 'hysteresis,' argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and...

While China's growth gathered momentum in 2017, rebalancing was uneven and decelerated along many dimensions reflecting the temporary factors behind the growth pickup. Going forward, rebalancing is expected to proceed as these temporary factors recede, but elevated income inequality and leverage...

Based on the experience of the Bank of Albania, the paper proposes a framework to estimate the interest rate lower bound in small, open, and euroized economies. The paper introduces a stylized monitoring tool to assess the unintended consequences of low policy rates. The paper is the first...