The European and Asian financial crises are the two most recent major regional crises. This paper compares their origins and evolution. The origins of the two sets of crises were different in some respects, but broadly similar. The two sets of crises also shared similarities in their evolution,...

The study is emphasizing the weak performances of the Romanian economy, unable to turn positive the current account deficits. On the contrary, because of rising problems in deficits financing through autonomous flows, the debt accumulation could lead Romania on the brink of entering a financial...

Sustainable growth in catching-up countries requires the widening of the foreign trade bottleneck. It is however not clear whether two prescriptions aiming at solving this problem greater exchange rate flexibility and the liberalization of the capital market, are in reality not contradictory....

This paper briefly reviews the IMF’s current practices and policy-making in the context of a proposed quadrupling of IMF resources to $1 trillion dollars, and a consequent increase in the Fund’s influence over economic policy-making in developing countries. It finds that the IMF is still...

Official holdings of US dollar reserves are partly invested outside the United States. These offshore investments do not strictly speaking finance the US current account, but do support the US dollar. Offshore holdings grow fast when intervention is large.

This paper argues that developing countries have limited arsenal at the national level to manage financial instability. The solutions have to be sought mainly at the multilateral level and these include: provision of adequate international liquidity at appropriate terms for current account...

From its beginning, Asia has been an important region for the OECD in terms of its members and partners. While the region’s economic performance is still strong, structural reforms, underpinned by coherent macroeconomic polices, need to be put in place to maintain this positive momentum. This...

This paper looks at both the theoretical and empirical literature on capital controls and finds that capital controls can play an important role in developing countries by helping to insulate them from some of the harmful effects of volatile and short-term capital flows. The authors look at...

Foreign Inflow plays an important role in country ’s development. The importance of foreign inflows is not limited to developing countries; developed and emerging economies also attract foreign inflows to supplement their resources to sustain growth. The importance of foreign inflow in...

Capital inflows are not an unmitigated blessing for the receiving region or country; in fact, they may pose serious dilemmas for economic policy. Large capital inflows are often associated with money and credit expansion, inflationary pressures, a real exchange rate appreciation, and a...