Trade finance is the backbone of international trade for entities ranging from a small businesses to multi-national corporations. An estimated 80 percent of world trade relies on this form of finance (WTO, 2017). Despite its systemic importance and rapid growth, data availability is only...

Using cross-country national accounts and firm-level data, we document a broad-based trend in rising gross saving and net lending of non-financial corporates across major industrialized countries over the last two decades, though most pronounced in countries with persistent current account...

There is increasing interest in fiscal decentralization in Peru as a mechanism to generate more involved decision-making at the subnational level. This is tempered with a continuing emphasis on overall fiscal stability. However, considerable work needs to be undertaken to define more clearly...

Effective risk management at central banks is best enabled by a sound framework embedded throughout the organization that supports the design and execution of risk management activities. To evaluate the risk management practices at a central bank, the Safeguards Assessments Division of the IMF's...

There is a strong economic rationale for close cooperation between the public and private sectors. This has resulted in a significant increase in the demand for the provision of public services through instruments combining public and private money such as public-private partnerships (PPPs or...

This paper presents a simple heuristic measure of tail risk, which is applied to individual bank stress tests and to public debt. Stress testing can be seen as a first order test of the level of potential negative outcomes in response to tail shocks. However, the results of stress testing can be...

This paper investigates the effects of national culture on firm risk-taking, using a comprehensive dataset covering 50,000 firms in 400 industries in 51 countries. Risk-taking is found to be higher for domestic firms in countries with low uncertainty aversion, low tolerance for hierarchical...