The global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the ensuing sovereign debt crisis in Europe provide evidence that portfolio rebalancing of financial investors can contribute to spread financial turmoil across countries. Rebalancing of portfolios, in turn, may be driven by the need to meet liquidity...

This paper examines how structural policies can influence a country's risk of suffering financial turmoil. Using a panel of 184 developed and emerging economies from 1970 to 2009, the empirical analysis examines which structural policies can affect financial stability by either shaping the...

Using the 2008-09 global financial crisis, this paper examines the role of different forms of international financial integration for asset price contagion in crisis times. Defining contagion as the transmission of financial market movements beyond the co-movements that would occur in 'tranquil'...

Mismatches between the supply and the demand of safe financial assets in fast-growing emerging countries have been singled out by economic theory as drivers of international capital flows and, ultimately, global current account imbalances. This paper assesses empirically the contribution of the...

This paper examines whether the composition of a country's external liabilities and assets has an incidence on its risk of suffering financial turmoil. Particular emphasis is put on the role of international financial integration, using newly-constructed measures of contagion shocks. These new...

Long-term bond yields have been low in recent years both in nominal and real terms, and - especially in the United States - they have reacted differently to shifts in monetary and fiscal stances relative to previous cycles. This article examines various possible explanations for this behaviour,...

This paper provides an overview of the political economy of oil in the CIS. It briefly situates the region's oil sector potential in the global context, before analysing the structural features of the oil sectors by country. It examines the ways in which CIS oil industries have been organised...

This paper assesses how and in what circumstances, fiscal consolidations are affected by monetary conditions, using data covering 24 OECD countries over the past 25 years, Focusing on fiscal consolidation quot;episodesquot;, it is found that these tend to occur when large budget deficits...

This article investigates the connection between the apparently uncorrelated issues of tax evasion and privatisation in a political economy framework. We first consider how the political process - given a country's level of development and income distribution - will affect the efficiency of the...

This paper addresses the often neglected question of how macroeconomic risk is shared across and within economies, and identifies reforms that could contribute towards achieving more desirable risksharing outcomes. For risk-sharing across countries, the paper discusses possibilities for...