This paper discusses Romania’s Request for a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). Since the 2008 global financial crisis, Romania has made significant progress in reducing macroeconomic imbalances and rebuilding fiscal and financial buffers. However, Romania remains vulnerable to external shocks,...

This paper analyses recent large movements in the yield spread for sovereign bonds as between Germany and other euro area countries. While the general increase in risk aversion that has characterised the financial crisis is an important factor on its own, it is found that this has also magnified...

We argue that the interactions among the current account and budget balances and the real interest rate can provide more information about the effective degree of financial openness of an economy than simple saving-investment correlations. Cointegration tests reveal a variety of linkages between...