This paper addresses two questions. First, under what circumstances will a centralized wage-bargaining system offer higher output and employment than a decentralized system? Second, what is the relationship between the degree of wage centralization and inflation? The paper argues that...

The main focus of the “wage bargaining” literature has been on the factors promoting real wage flexibility at the macro level. This paper, in contrast, examines the microeconomic issues of wage bargaining. More specifically, this paper appraises the following questions: (a) what are the...

This paper assesses whether corporate liquidity needs in the G7 economies were met during the containment phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (February-June 2020) using various approaches to identify credit supply shocks. The pandemic crisis adversely affected nonfinancial corporate sector cash...

This paper studies the dynamics of external accounts during 278 economic recession events in the past 60 years and sheds light on key factors that shape these patterns. Economic recessions trigger highly-persistent increases in the current account, driven by an initial, sharp decline in...

In the last decade, over half of the EU countries in the euro area or with currencies pegged to the euro were hit by large risk premium shocks. Previous papers have focused on the impact of these shocks on demand. This paper, by contrast, focuses on the impact on supply. We show that risk...

This paper studies changes in the transmission of common versus sectoral idiosyncratic shocks across different U.S. nonfarm business sectors during the Great Recession, and evaluates the cross-sectoral spillovers. Shocks are identified by dynamic factor methods. We find that the Great Recession...

Financial crises pose unique challenges for forecast accuracy. Using the IMF's Monitoring of Fund Arrangement (MONA) database, we conduct the most comprehensive evaluation of IMF forecasts to date for countries in times of crises. We examine 29 macroeconomic variables in terms of bias,...

This paper presents a new dataset on the dynamics of non-performing loans (NPLs) during 88 banking crises since 1990. The data show similarities across crises during NPL build-ups but less so during NPL resolutions. We find a close relationship between NPL problems-elevated and unresolved...