This paper offers a broad introduction to the workings of the global financial system, the dynamics of the main financial markets, the nature and goals of the key financial institutions and the crucial role played by central banks and regulatory agencies. An important part of the paper focuses...

This Selected Issues paper summarizes estimates of the gap between current housing prices and their equilibrium levels in the United States. It examines short-term dynamics of price adjustment. Reflecting uncertainties about how to analyze underlying housing price trends, two approaches are used...

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 paper analyzes empirically the recent Asian financial crisis using high frequency data of exchange rates and stock indices of the Philippines and Thailand. Utilizing standard time-series techniques, this study confirms that there is evidence that developments in some sectoral...

We test for the existence of a moral hazard effect attributable to official crisis lending by analyzing the evolution of sovereign bond spreads in emerging markets before and after the Russian crisis. The nonbailout of Russia in August 1998 is interpreted as an event that decreased the perceived...

August to September 1998 has been characterized as one of the worst episodes of global financial distress in decades. This paper investigates the transmission of the Russian and the LTCM crises through global equity markets using a panel of 14 developing and industrial countries. The results...

This paper examines the regulatory and supervisory implications stemming from the dominance of large and complex financial institutions, drawing on the recent Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) mission work on Sweden. The analysis highlights the importance of consolidated supervision, of...

This paper presents evidence on the relative importance of alternative contagion channels during the Thai, Russian, and Brazilian crises. Results show that when crises are measured by changes in sovereign bond spreads, financial competition seems to explain almost all contagion episodes....

The recent global financial crisis has forced a re-examination of risk transmission in the financial sector and how it affects financial stability. Current macroprudential policy and surveillance (MPS) efforts are aimed establishing a regulatory framework that helps mitigate the risk from...