The global financial crisis has renewed policymakers'' interest in improving the policy framework for financial stability, and an open question is to what extent and in what form should financial stability reports be part of it. We examine the recent experience with central banks'' financial...

This paper uses the Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model (GIMF), a New Keynesian open-economy general equilibrium model suitable for an integrated evaluation of monetary and fiscal policies, to analyze monetary policy challenges facing the Czech Republic. In the context of the recent...

Zimbabwe''s failure to address continuing central bank quasi-fiscal losses has interfered with both monetary management and the independence and credibility of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). Realized quasi-fiscal losses are estimated to have amounted to about 75 percent of GDP in 2006....

This paper analyzes Zimbabwe''s export performance in recent years and identifies the factors that could improve export performance, from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. Improving export performance is critical to a turnaround in Zimbabwe''s economic situation. The growth rate...

This paper provides an assessment of the poverty and social impact of replacing Ethiopia''s sales tax with a value-added tax (VAT). The results indicate that this reform has not had a major adverse effect on the poorest 40 percent of the population. The VAT is progressive in its incidence, and...

The paper investigates the divergence between inflation and monetary expansion in Zimbabwe since late 2003. The substantial decline in velocity and increasing levels of real money balances during 2004 are at odds with a record of inflation closely tracking the growth rates of monetary aggregates...

When a country''s banking system becomes more linked to the global banking network, does that system get more or less prone to a banking crisis? Using model simulations and econometric estimates based on a world-wide dataset, we find an M-shaped relationship between financial stability of a...

This paper uses six waves of the Bank of Italy Survey of Households Income and Wealth to explore the dynamics of asset portfolio ownership. The household asset portfolio decision is a choice among discrete alternatives, and I model the problem in a multinomial framework. I focus on a...