This paper examines the evolving importance of common global components underlying domestic financial conditions. It develops financial conditions indices (FCIs) that make it possible to compare a large set of advanced and emerging market economies. It finds that a common component, 'global...

The year 2008 witnessed failure of major banks in USA and Europe fueling liquidity crisis and generating unprecedented depression worldwide. Countries across the world applied coordinated remedial efforts such as low interest rate and pumping stimulus money into the economy. The response was...

This paper examines how the 1990s capital account liberalization policy trend affected international capital flows, and tests a new hypothesis that the depth and efficiency of the domestic financial system impacts the efficacy of capital account policy. The paper exploits a recently published...

After decades of trial, error, and occasional regress, the pieces of a successful Latin American economic model can be seen scattered among the leading economies of the region. The most traditional macroeconomic maladies of the emerging world - such as chronic fiscal imbalances and monetary...

Bureaucracy, unclear regulations, corruption, and favoritism of nationals in employment, create adverse conditions for both domestic and foreign investment in the Middle East and North Africa region. Entrepreneurs who want to operate in the region have to consider the level of restrictiveness in...

We use recently developed cointegration tests that determine endogenously the regime shift to test for bilateral real interest rate convergence (real interest rate parity) in the G7 against the US in the 1974-1995 period. In contrast with previous studies that employed classical regression...

How important are financial and labor market frictions for the business cycle dynamics of a small open economy? What are the quantitative effects of increased financial risk on output and inflation? What drives the variation in the intensive and extensive margin of labor supply? What are the...

The current financial crisis has made it abundantly clear that business cycle modeling can no longer abstract from financial factors. It is also clear that the current standard approach of modeling labor markets without explicit unemployment has its limitations. We extend what is becoming the...

Which are the main frictions and driving forces of business cycle dynamics in a small open economy? To answer this question we extend what is becoming the standard new Keynesian model in three dimensions. First, we incorporate frictions in the financing of the capital stock. Second, we model...

This paper analyzes de-facto integration in some Emerging Market Economies based on behavior of deviations from Covered Interest Parity in the last decade. An Asymmetric Self Exciting Threshold Autoregressive model is used to estimate bands of speculative inaction. The estimated bands follow the...