Interest-rate spreads fluctuate widely across time and countries. We characterize their behavior using some 3,200 quarterly observations for 21 advanced and 17 emerging economies since the early 1990s. Before the financial crisis, spreads are 10 times more volatile in emerging economies than in...

It is well known that a tightening or easing of the United States' monetary policy affects financial markets in emerging economies. This paper argues that uncertainty about future monetary policy is a separate transmission channel. We focus on the taper tantrum episode in 2013, a period with an...

The influence of recent global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war on the variability of major macroeconomic trends not only shows synchronized behavior across economies but also induces similar policy responses to counter these shocks. The purpose of this article...