The recent European economic crisis has dramatically exposed the failures of the various institutional mechanisms in place to maintain economic stability in Europe, and has unveiled the difficulty in achieving international coordination on fiscal and financial stability policies. Drawing on the...

There are few things more constant in life than the rise and fall of financial markets. When markets crash, however, we are forced to restore them while learning from our mistakes. In the wake of the recent subprime mortgage crisis, Congress has drastically but deservedly overhauled the...

Drawing on the 2016 update of the IMF's Central Bank Legislation Database, this paper examines differences in central bank legal frameworks before and after the Global Financial Crisis. Examples from select countries show that many central bank laws have undergone changes in objectives,...

The Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) for Poorest Countries provides for a time-bound suspension of debt repayments to public creditors. Commercial creditors, however, are not so bound. Earlier this year there was an initiative to introduce a moratorium on debt service on sovereign bond...

Financial systems and public treasuries are communicating vessels: strength or weakness in one flows to the other, and back. This chapter considers the implications of this insight using case studies from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The connection is not unique to Europe, although it does...

This Occasional Paper analyses how significant expansions in central banks' mandates, roles and instruments can result in challenges to the independence of monetary policy. The paper reviews, in particular, some of the key challenges to central bank independence brought about by the global...

More than twenty years after the EU eliminated its internal land borders, the Union still lacks an integrated airspace. This seems to be the most immediate regulatory lesson of the recent volcanic ash crisis. In this brief report, I will provide a first-hand analysis of the regulatory answer...

Government-driven credit played an important role in countervailing the private credit crunch in Brazil during the recent financial crisis. However, government credit concessions continued to expand after the economy recovered. This paper investigates some important features of this expansion...

Non-government sector evolved to take up certain tasks that were unaddressed due to government's inability or budgetary constraints. With experts gathered from different sectors non-governmental organizations did wonderful deeds in development of Pakistan. Unfortunately, role of a few civil...

Government-driven credit played an important role in countervailing the private credit crunch in Brazil during the recent financial crisis. However, government credit concessions continued to expand after the economy recovered. This paper investigates some important features of this expansion...