The analysis of currency and maturity mismatches in sectoral balance sheets has increasingly become a regular element in the IMF’s tool kit for surveillance in emerging market countries. This paper describes this so-called balance sheet approach and shows how it can be applied to detect...

The paper lays out an analytical framework for understanding crises in emerging markets based on examination of stock variables in the aggregate balance sheet of a country and the balance sheets of its main sectors (assets and liabilities). It focuses on the risks created by maturity, currency,...

China's recent investment boom looks much like the investment boom in the Asian tigers of the 1990s. Both were marked by a surge in bank credit to the private sector, a real estate boom and questions about the quality of domestic financial intermediation. Yet, China has few of the external...

High oil prices are again transforming oil-exporting countries. With oil trading at $90 a barrel, government coffers in these countries are overflowing with the oil windfall, and stock markets there are booming. However, one feature of these oil exporters has not changed: their propensity to peg...

Roughly once a year, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the US treasury secretary and in some cases the finance ministers of other G-7 countries will get a call from the finance minister of a large emerging market economy. The emerging market finance minister will indicate...

KURT SCHULER ARGUES MOST ECONOMISTS (MYSELF INCLUDED) failed to get the facts right. Schuler writes, “economists whose work in other areas I admire failed to do the research necessary for understanding Argentina’s situation accurately. As a result their analysis was faultyâ€...

The escalating crisis in Ukraine has prompted the United States and Europe to impose the toughest economic sanctions against Russia since the end of the Cold War. Continued instability and military conflict in eastern Ukraine are straining Ukrainian finances. Despite a generous international...