This paper analyzes different government debt relief programs in the European Monetary Union. I build a model and study different options ranging from debt relief to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The analysis reveals the following: First, patient countries repay debt, while impatient...

During the past fifteen years, financial markets in Latin America have experienced a major transformation. This process and its effects on the nature of risks and policy challenges in Latin America were the focus of a May 2007 conference in Mexico City sponsored by the Representative Office for...

This paper uses cross country regression analysis on a large set of countries to consider two hypotheses. The first is that increased public debt as a percentage of the economy reduces confidence in financial institutions. The second is that increased public debt relative to the economy lowers...

We explore the links between credit expansion, inflation, and inflation expectations, and show that active public debt management can trigger a non-interest rate channel of credit expansion. This creates incentives for the government to use debt management for promoting non-debt management...

Empirical evidence demonstrates that credit standards, including lending margins and collateral requirements, move in a countercyclical direction. In this study, we construct a small open economy model with financial frictions to generate the countercyclical movement in credit standards. Our...

We study the yields in the German treasury bills market. We take a detailed look at the yield banks require to buy treasury bills in the primary market, and we also examine the yield households and nonbank firms demand to buy these bills in the secondary market. We use data from real world...