Conditionality is at the very heart of IMF lending and has been the subject of intense debates ever since the Fund's inception. Its success is of crucial importance not only for countries' chances of achieving the goals of IMF lending programmes, but also for the credibility of the Fund as a...

Since the global financial crisis, the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN), traditionally consisting mainly of countries' own foreign exchange reserves with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acting as a backstop, has expanded significantly with the continued accumulation of reserves, the...

In this paper we construct Financial Conditions Indices (FCIs) for the euro area, for the period 2003 to 2011, using a wide range of prices, quantities, spreads and survey data, grounded in the theoretical literature. One FCI includes monetary policy variables, while two versions without...

This paper investigates the determinants of takeovers in a large sample of UK quoted companies. We focus on the channels through which the market for corporate control monitors company performance and discretionary managerial behaviour. Our results indicate that the market for corporate control...

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate whether companies can use acquisition as a strategy to reduce their probability of takeover. A subsidiary issue is whether such a strategy has any impact on their subsequent probability of bankruptcy. The determinants of making an acquisition,...

This paper contributes to the literature on the estimation of causal effects by providing an analytical formula for individual specific treatment effects and an empirical methodology that allows us to estimate these effects. We derive the formula from a general model with minimal restrictions,...