Over the last two decades, world trade and production have become increasingly organized around global value chains (GVC). Recent theoretical work has shown that countries can benefit from participation in GVCs through multiple channels. However, little is known empirically about the economic...

Economic adjustment and reform programs, including those supported by international financial institutions (IFIs), must cope with informational asymmetries and special interest politics. This presents a particularly serious issue when IFIs make structural economic reforms a condition for...

This paper explores the connection between interest rates in major industrial countries and annual real output growth in other countries. The results show that high large-country interest rates have a contractionary effect on annual real GDP growth in the domestic economy, but that this effect...

The Gulf of Guinea''s tremendous potential is creating investment opportunities for the region. Some of its resources, such as oil, minerals, and forests, continue to attract significant investments whereas others, like natural gas, could be exploited to their full potential if necessary...

We document Hong Kong SAR''s evolving role as an international financial center in the Asia region, the importance of the growing special link with China as well as supply-side advantages, and outline the scope for future financial services growth. Hong Kong SAR has a long established track...

This paper proposes a new definition of Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) and develops a statistical method to differentiate between OFCs and non-OFCs using data from the Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS), the International Investment Position (IIP), and the balance of payments. The...

In this paper, we use the extreme value theory (EVT) framework to analyze contagion risk across the international banking system. We test for the likelihood that an extreme shock affecting a major, systemic U.K. bank would also affect another large local or foreign counterpart, and vice-versa....

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...