This paper takes a step in empirically testing the implications of a number of theoretical models that attempt to highlight the dynamics behind currency crises. By focusing on countries with broadly disparate economic and political arrangements, the study attempts to determine the extent to...

This paper tests for uncovered interest parity (UIP) using daily data for 23 developing and developed countries through the crisis-strewn 1990s. We find that UIP works better on average in the 1990s than in previous eras in the sense that the slope coefficient from a regression of exchange rate...

This paper analyzes the nonfinancial corporation (NFC) sector's financial balance sheets using data available from the OECD. In our sample of 20 advanced economies, corporate debt in percent of GDP-a frequently used indicator in the context of corporate balance sheet adjustments-has remained...

There is now a substantial theoretical literature arguing that inflation impedes financial deepening. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the relationship is a nonlinear one, in that there is a threshold level of inflation below which inflation has a positive effect on financial depth,...

This paper asks whether inflation targeting improves economic performance, as measured by the behavior of inflation, output, and interest rates. We compare 7 OECD countries that adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s to 13 that did not. After the early 1990s, performance improved along...

Lockdowns imposed around the world to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic are having a differential impact on economic activity and jobs. This paper presents a new index of the feasibility to work from home to investigate what types of jobs are most at risk. We estimate that over 97.3...

A striking feature of sovereign lending is that many countries with moderate debt-to-income ratios systematically face higher spreads and more stringent borrowing constraints than others with far higher debt ratios. Earlier research has rationalized the phenomenon in terms of sovereign...

This paper looks at the effects of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programs on banking crises in a large sample of developing countries, over the period 1970-2010. The endogeneity of the IMF intervention is addressed by adopting an instrumental variable strategy and a propensity score...