We examine how Korea’s capital flows and trade have been affected by the quantitative easing (QE) of the United States and the quantitative and qualitative easing (QQME) of Japan. Korea is an intriguing case due to its borderline position between advanced and emerging market country...

Japan has the most rapidly aging population in the world. This affects growth and fiscal sustainability, but the potential impact on inflation has been studied less. We use the IMF’s Global Integrated Fiscal and Monetary Model (GIMF) and find substantial deflationary pressures from aging,...

The main purpose of this paper is to construct a financial conditions index (FCI) for South Africa. The analysis extracts the index by applying two alternative approaches (principal component analysis and Kalman filter), which identify an unobservable common factor from a group of external and...

Since the start of the 2008 - 09 financial crisis, the Polish Overnight Index Average (POLONIA) has persistently been below the policy rate, suggesting a limited influence of the NBP’s open market operations on the short-term interbank rate. In this regard, this paper analyzes the...

Macroprudential policies – caps on loan to value ratios, limits on credit growth and other balance sheets restrictions, (countercyclical) capital and reserve requirements and surcharges, and Pigouvian levies – have become part of the policy paradigm in emerging markets and advanced...

This paper analyzes market reactions to the 2013–14 Fed announcements relating to tapering of asset purchases and their relationship to macroeconomic fundamentals and country economic and financial structures. The study uses daily data on exchange rates, government bond yields, and stock...

This paper estimates neutral real interest rate (NRIR) ranges for 10 Latin American countries that either have full-fledged inflation targeting regimes in place or have recently adopted them, using an array of methodologies commonly used in the literature. We find that NRIRs have declined in the...

The External Balance Assessment (EBA) methodology has been developed by the IMF’s Research Department as a successor to the CGER methodology for assessing current accounts and exchange rates in a multilaterally consistent manner. Compared to other approaches, EBA emphasizes distinguishing...

Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

This study investigates empirically what the major factors are which have driven Wenzhou’s informal credit market and how much that market is responsive to monetary policies and the formal banking conditions nationwide. The main findings are: (i) the informal credit lending rates are...