This special feature studies the risks posed by the rapid rise in property developer debt in several Asian economies in recent years. Gradually, the firms involved are shifting away from traditional bank loans and choosing to issue debt securities, often in foreign currency. So far indebtedness...

We quantify the impact of barriers to international investment, using a novel multi-country dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous investors and imperfect capital mobility. Our model yields a gravity equation for bilateral foreign asset positions. We estimate this gravity equation...

Political economists debate the existence of a political business cycle (PBCs), in which politicians stimulate the economy to improve their re-election chances, only to cause a post-election slowdown. For developing countries, scholars have found evidence of election-year policy tinkering. Yet...

This paper provides new evidence relating to the debate of whether long-lived TOT shocks affect saving rates using a sample of 56 developing countries for the period 1980-2010. The core aspect of the empirical analysis is to utilize the terms-of-trade (TOT) shock-duration and trend-growth...

This paper addresses the question of what the current international legal systems concerning subsidies for innovation are and whether these fit the findings of economic analysis. Innovation is a very relevant economic instrument toward increasing the commercial and political competitiveness of...

This paper surveys recent empirical studies examining various fields of cultural production in order to scrutinize to what extent they can inform drafting new policies in the field of liberalizing the trade in cultural goods and services. The analysis focuses on three main groups of empirical...

We show how the most likely deformation can be assigned to a yield curve, consistent with subjetive views on a handful of key rates. We provide an inutive explanation for the solution, which is perhaps not what one might at first blush have expected. We draw analogies from physics that...

Asset swaps provide a form of asset financing, where investors borrow funds to purchase an asset, typically a bond. Asset swaps are also a good bond rich-cheap analysis tool. Such swaps can of course be used for speculative purposes. In this paper we provide a brief overview of asset swaps and...