What are the macroeconomic consequences of changing aggregate lending standards in residential mortgage markets, as measured by loan-to-value (LTV) ratios? In a structural VAR, GDP and business investment increase following an expansionary LTV shock. Residential investment, by contrast, falls, a...

Using monthly headline inflation data covering 184 countries for the period between 1971:M1 and 2020:M12, this paper investigates the role of standard gravity variables on inflation convergence across bilateral countries. The convergence analysis is based on ten-year rolling windows to control...

The formal arrangements for the governance of international monetary and financial crises have remained reasonably stable over the past 40 years, but the identity of the leading actors, has changed. Over this period, the role of the largest central banks – first and foremost, the US Federal...

The IMF has been leading efforts to develop and implement Codes of Monetary and Fiscal Transparency. Such Codes aim to increase disclosure of public sector information on the Internet-representing a type of "e-transparency." Do such codes and increased Internet-based public sector information...

An important development in Europe was the emergence of nationally circulating commodity money. Asymmetric information between coin producers and users provided rulers with an opportunity to supply a public good: standard universally accepted coins. We describe the development of a sophisticated...