This paper examines the demand for international reserves in nine East Asian economies during the period 1970-2005 using panel cointegration and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS). The panel cointegration tests find the existence of a long-run relationship between the demand for...

This paper uses the balance sheet approach to analyze macroeconomic vulnerabilities in Barbados between 2006 and 2009. It discusses the financial position of the economy and its main sectors and the sectors' exposure to changes in exchange rates. The main finding of the analysis is that the...

How to entrench hard-won gains, increase resilience to shocks, and improve growth performance to reduce poverty? As Central America moves forward in regaining macroeconomic stability, these are the challenges. This study analyzes Central America’s real, fiscal, monetary, and financial...

This paper quantifies the economic impact of changes in U.S. monetary policy on emerging market countries. We explore empirically how country risk, as proxied by sovereign bond spreads, is influenced by U.S. monetary policy, country-specific fundamentals, and conditions in global capital...

Countries’ absolute and relative international reserves adequacy has recently attracted considerable attention. The analysis has however concentrated on the largest and most advanced economies. We apply various methodologies for assessing reserve adequacy in Central America, taking into...

We identify global and regional fluctuations in international private debt flows to emerging and developing countries using data on cross border loans and international bond issuance over 1993 -2009. We estimate the effects of individual borrower characteristics as well as macroeconomic...

This 2007 Article IV Consultation highlights that Jamaica’s economy is estimated to have achieved its best growth performance in over a decade during FY2006/07, which ended on March 31, 2007. Notwithstanding some recent moderation of momentum, the economy is estimated to have expanded by...

The purpose of this paper is to show that macroeconomic impacts might be very different depending on what strategy developing countries will take. In the first part, we investigate what macroeconomic impacts an increased aversion to liquidity risk can have in a simple open economy model. When...