This paper examines the implications of the global financial crisis of 2007-10 for reform of the global financial architecture, in particular the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board and their interaction. These two institutions are not fully comparable, but they must...

Several European countries face challenges reminiscent of those faced by the emerging economies of Latin America. The economic booms in some peripheral Euro-zone countries financed by large capital inflows; the credit and asset price booms and then the busts including Sudden Stops in capital...

This paper discusses proposals for common euro area sovereign securities. Such instruments can potentially serve two functions: in the short-term, stabilize financialmarkets and banks and, in the medium-term, help improve the euro area economic governance framework through enhanced fiscal...

Despite the frequency of official debt restructurings, little systematic evidence has been produced on their characteristics and implications. Using a dataset covering more than 400 Paris Club agreements, this paper aims to fill that gap. It provides a comprehensive description of the evolving...

This paper shows that bank linkages have a positive effect on international trade. A global banking network (GBN) is constructed at the bank level, using individual syndicated loan data from Loan Analytics for 1990-2007. Network distance between bank pairs is computed and aggregated to country...

After decades using monetary aggregates as the main instrument of monetary policy and having different varieties of crawling peg exchange rate regimes, Colombia adopted a full-fledged inflation-targeting (IT) regime in 1999, with inflation as the nominal anchor, a floating exchange rate, and the...

The more severe a financial crisis, the greater has been the likelihood of its management under an IMF-supported programme and the shorter the time from crisis onset to programme initiation. Political links to the United States have increased programme likelihood but have prompted faster...

Recent work suggests non-financial firms have acted like financial intermediaries particularly in emerging economies. This paper corroborates these findings but then asks "why?". The results indicate evidence for carry-trade activities, but they are focused on countries with higher levels of...

We look at the exchange rate policy choices and outcomes for small rich economies. Small rich economies face significant policy challenges due to proportionately greater economic volatility than larger economies. These economies usually choose some form of fixed exchange rate regime,...