The world is still recovering from the most recent global recession associated with the 2008-09 financial crisis and the possibility of another downturn persists as the global economy struggles to regain lost ground. But, what is a global recession? What is a global recovery? What really happens...

The paper compares fiscal cyclicality across regions and countries from 1960 to 2016. It finds that more than half of 170 countries analyzed in seven regions had, in more recent years, limited fiscal space, and that their fiscal policy was either cyclical or procyclical. This was particularly...

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between the speed of buildup of private debt (household and corporate) and the depth of recessions. To do this, we differentiate between financial recessions and normal recessions on the basis of how quickly their private debt builds up. In...

The U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) is expected to start raising policy interest rates in the near term and thus commence a tightening cycle for the first time in nearly a decade. The taper tantrum episode of May-June 2013 is a reminder that even a long anticipated change in Fed policies can trigger...

This paper investigates the effect that tight credit conditions had on outward foreign direct investment flows during the 2008-2010 global financial crisis. A difference-in-differences approach is used to isolate a "credit channel" impact of the global financial crisis on foreign direct...