This book explores the volatility, efficiency and integration of stock markets in Islamic countries. It presents recent trends, growth and performance, before moving on to explore how patterns change during different business cycles for short-term and long-term investors, and ranks the...

This paper studies the sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in developing countries using a structural VAR approach. Identification of the sources is achieved using long-run restrictions derived from a theoretical model of a small open economy encompassing a large number of macroeconomic...

This study reviews early simulations of the effects of German unification using three different rational-expectations multi-country models. Despite significant differences in their structures and in the implementations of the unification shock, the models delivered a number of common results...

This paper uses micro panel data to examine differences in the cyclical variability of employment, hours, and real wages for skilled and unskilled workers. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that, at the aggregate level, skilled and unskilled workers are subject to essentially the same...

This paper examines the macroeconomic impact of tariffs. Existing theoretical models do not provide clear-cut predictions concerning the co-movement between unilateral tariff changes and a set of macroeconomic variables consisting of the real exchange rate, the trade balance, and the level of...

The Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) has made significant progress in improving the quality and quantity of the macroeconomic statistics it produces and disseminates to the public. The Selected Issues Paper discusses prospects and challenges for credit unions in the ECCU. It reviews the...

Both analytical models and casual empiricism suggest that the timing of the recessionary costs associated with inflation stabilization in chronic inflation countries may depend on the nominal anchor which is used. Under money-based stabilization, the recession occurs at the beginning of the...

This paper analyzes the impact of strained government finances on macroeconomic stability and the transmission of fiscal policy. Using a variant of the model by Curdia and Woodford (2009), we study a ""sovereign risk channel"" through which sovereign default risk raises funding costs in the...

This study proposes a data-based algorithm to select a subset of indicators from a large data set with a focus on forecasting recessions. The algorithm selects leading indicators of recessions based on the forecast encompassing principle and combines the forecasts. An application to U.S. data...

This paper uses a vector autoregression (VAR) approach to identify the causes of the 1990-92 recession in the UK. The VAR approach is shown to be particularly pertinent for quantifying the relative magnitude of the different demand shocks, and in decomposing them into monetary and expectational...