This paper assesses the impact of the 2008-09 global financial and economic crisis on the medium-term growth prospects of the countries of central and eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, which began an economic transition about two decades ago. We use cross-country growth regressions,...

This paper proposes a new panel model of cross-sectional dependence. The model has a number of potential structural interpretations that relate to economic phenomena such as herding in financial markets. On an econometric level it provides a flexible approach to the modelling of interactions...

While empirical literature has documented a negative relation between default risk and stock returns, the theory suggests that default risk should be positively priced. We provide an explanation for this "default anomaly", by calculating monthly probabilities of default (PDs) for a large sample...

During the Great Recession, the collapse of consumption across the U.S. varied greatly but systematically with house-price declines. We find that financial distress among U.S. households amplified the sensitivity of consumption to house-price shocks. We uncover two essential facts: (1) the...

Security Transaction Tax (STT) was introduced in the Indian capital market in 2004. It is a tax on transaction of equities as well as their derivatives. Despite the reduction in STT over the years, it constitutes a large percentage (next only to brokerage fee) of the total cost of trading. The...