The turmoil in the sovereign debt markets in Europe has raised concerns on the usefulness of sovereign credit default swaps and government bond yields in periods of distress. In addressing this issue, we introduce a novel nonlinear approach for the analysis of non-stationary multivariate data...

Iran’s agriculture part is one of the areas that can have an important effect on the growth of country’s economy. Concerning this, variables that can increase value added agriculture have been concentrated on and the government is supporting them. One of these policies is granting loanable...

This paper examines whether Asian banks are still prone to moral hazard in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian crisis. Using a sample of commercial banks from 12 Asian countries during the 2001–2007 period, our empirical findings highlight that greater market power in the banking market results in...

This study uses quarterly data from 1973 to 2007 to investigate the influence of financial institutions on economic growth in Taiwan. We find that the breakpoint obtained by Gregory and Hansen (1996) appears in the third quarter of 1982, which coincides with the period of financial openness. In...

This paper investigates asymmetric co-integration and causality effects between financial development and economic growth for South African data spanning over the period of 1992 to 2013. To this end, we make use of the momentum threshold autoregressive (MTAR) approach which allows for threshold...

This 2009 Article IV Consultation focuses on euro area policies. The euro area remains in recession, with signs of improvement yet to evolve into a recovery. The large drop in financial wealth, an associated increase in private savings, tight financing conditions, and the adjustment of global...

This study finds that equity returns in the banking sector in the wake of the Great Recession and the European sovereign debt crisis have been driven mainly by weak growth prospects and heightened sovereign risk; and to a lesser extent by deteriorating funding conditions and investor sentiment....

We present evidence of the relationship between trade-openness and growth in the sample of former communist countries before and after the transition from a central planned economy (CPE) to a market economy by applying standard OLS and panel estimation techniques. The main finding is that during...

The 2007 Article IV Consultation with the Kingdom of the Netherlands explains fiscal policy and financial sector issues. Improvements in the macroeconomic and business environments and technological innovation have contributed positively to Dutch competitiveness. Executive Directors emphasized...

This technical note on financing of the private sector for Mexico describes the evolution, composition, and determinants of financing to the nonfinancial private sector in Mexico between 2000 and 2005. Equity issuance has not played an important role in financing the private sector in Mexico...