The signals approach was applied to 24 of the indicators around the dates of the 29 banking and the 87 currency crises. In what follows, we first compare our results for the 15 original indicators in Kaminsky and Reinhart (1996) to those presented in that study. This exercise assesses the...

In a recent paper, we studied economic growth and inflation at different levels of government and external debt. The public discussion of our empirical strategy and results has been somewhat muddled. Here, we attempt to clarify matters, particularly with respect sample coverage (our evidence...

The U.S recession of 2007 to 2009 is unique in the post-World-War-II experience by the broad company it kept. Activity contracted around the world, with the advanced countries of the North experiencing declines in spending normally the purview of the developing economies of the South. The last...

The widespread banking crises since 2007 among advanced economies and the “near” default of Greece in 2010 dashed the popular notion that rich countries have outgrown severe financial crises. Record or near-record declines in output accompanying these events signaled the end of the...

The standard pattern: capital flows into the new “hot” nation, but then stop or reverses forcing painful adjustment. This column presents research based on such episodes from 181 nations during 1980-2007 and for a subset of 66 nations for the 1960-2007 period. If the pattern of the past few...

We highlight in this note how an application of a similar estimation approach as ours to Colombian data for a more recent period following financial and capital account liberalization may find that the money supply is "endogenous" (i.e. demand-determined as long as the exchange rate is heavily...

Financial crises are historically associated with the “4 deadly D’s”: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues dragged down, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debt piles up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries, the...

This paper has addressed the following questions: Do sovereign credit ratings systematically help predict currency and banking crises? If not, why not? What needs to change? What is the behavior of credit ratings following the crises? Are there important differences in the behavior of credit...

Fashions are hard to resist, and it is now fashionable in much of the North to rely on a fiscal engine of growth. As for emerging markets, however, boosting spending at a time in which revenues are contracting or, in many cases, collapsing for an uncertain period of time is an more complicated...

Both theory and the empirical evidence for a broad range of countries have identified a negative relationship between domestic and foreign saving. Still, based on the experience of the 1990s, a popular view has emerged that domestic and foreign saving are positively related in Asia and...