Government debt has risen substantially in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) since the global financial crisis. The current environment of low global interest rates and weak growth may appear to mitigate concerns about elevated debt levels. Considering currently subdued...

In the post-global financial crisis period, the financing of countercyclical policies led not only to a reduction in the fiscal surpluses across Sub-Saharan African countries, but also an increase in their levels of indebtedness. Although public debt for the region in 2018 was still below that...

Turkey has moved rapidly from a current account that was relatively in balance up to the turn of the millennia, to sustaining relatively large current account deficits over the past 15 years. Using annual data from 1986 to 2017 and a jackknife model-averaging estimator, the paper estimates the...

This paper assesses the consequences of implementing a joint liability debt system in a two-country small open economy model. With joint liability a default of one country makes the other participant liable for its debt. The results highlight a trade-off between the contagion risk, in the sense...

Emerging market and developing economies have experienced recurrent episodes of rapid debt accumulation over the past fifty years. This paper examines the consequences of debt accumulation using a three-pronged approach: an event study of debt accumulation episodes in 100 emerging market and...

Episodes of debt accumulation have been a recurrent feature of the global economy over the past fifty years. Since 2010, emerging and developing economies have experienced another wave of historically large and rapid debt accumulation. Similar past debt buildups have often ended in widespread...

This paper provides new evidence of factors, other than GDP per capita, that correlate with the development of insurance markets. Based on 20 years of insurance premium data from 180 countries, and a similar wealth of data on institutions and financial market development, the paper presents...