This paper presents two approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or a permanent phenomenon. The two approaches-the time series behavior of credit outstanding and a two-stage program selection and access...

This paper reviews recent advances in the specification and estimation of Bayesian Vector Autoregressive models (BVARs). After describing the Bayesian principle of estimation, we first present the methodology originally developed by Litterman (1986) and Doan et al. (1984) and review alternative...

There is strong evidence that interest rates and bond yield movements exhibit both stochastic volatility and unanticipated jumps. The presence of frequent jumps makes it natural to ask whether there is a premium for jump risk embedded in observed bond yields. This paper identifies a class of...

This paper provides a model on how altruism, "attachment" to the home country, and portfolio diversification may act as potential motives behind workers' remittances. It shows that the level of workers' remittances depends on how great are their degrees of altruism and "attachment" to their home...

Superior information exchanged over the course of lending relationships generates bank-client specificities to the extent that such information cannot be communicated credibly to outsiders. Consequently, banks obtain higher profits from more captured borrowers than from borrowers with financing...

A perennial question in international finance is to what extent stock returns are influenced by country-location, as opposed to industry-affiliation, factors. This paper develops a novel methodology to measure these effects, in which portfolios mimicking "pure" country and industry factors are...

The existing literature suggests a number of alternative methods to test for the presence of contagion during financial market crises. This paper reviews those methods and shows how they are related in a unified framework. A number of extensions are also suggested that allow for multivariate...

This paper develops a small open economy model where entrepreneurs partially finance investment using foreign currency denominated debt subject to a risk premium above and beyond international interest rates. We use Bayesian estimation techniques to evaluate the importance of balance sheet...

Dollarization in Russia increased rapidly during the early 1990s, but failed to come down in the second half of the 1990s in spite of exchange rate stabilization. To explain this "dollarization hysteresis," this paper develops a model in which network externalities in the demand for currency can...

We analyze the performance of kernel density methods applied to grouped data to estimate poverty (as applied in Sala-i-Martin, 2006, QJE). Using Monte Carlo simulations and household surveys, we find that the technique gives rise to biases in poverty estimates, the sign and magnitude of which...