This article reviews the origin and spread of the distressed debt problem in the transition region. We argue that while the crisis was triggered abroad, the current high level of distressed debt in various transition countries mainly reflects home-grown vulnerabilities. As in the West, the root...

This paper reviews a number of initiatives taken by public and private institutions aimed at minimizing the impact of the on-going crisis of the financial sector on its ability to supply trade finance to support trade at affordable rates. In doing so, it draws a few policy lessons. One of them...

This article reviews the origin and spread of the distressed debt problem in the transition region. We argue that while the crisis was triggered abroad, the current high level of distressed debt in various transition countries mainly reflects home-grown vulnerabilities. As in the West, the root...

The financial crisis has led to a reconsideration of banks' global business models. Using a dataset derived from the BIS banking statistics, this paper studies the geography of global banking. It distinguishes between “international” and “multinational” banks, their respective funding...

The Euro Crisis has marked a sharp inversion in the process of the European financial integration and, more specifically, a repatriation of countries' debt from foreign to domestic investors. Yet the drivers of the financial fragmentation remain unclear. This paper investigates the empirical...

Governments and domestic banks in Europe have attracted criticism due to the heightening inclination of banks to hold more local sovereign debt in the midst of the crisis. This has traditionally been interpreted as an evidence of financial repression or moral suasion. By using a novel dataset on...

European banks have been criticized for holding excessive domestic government debt during economic downturns, which may have intensified the diabolic loop between sovereign and bank credit risks. By using a novel bank-level dataset covering the entire timeline of the Eurozone crisis, I first...

European banks have been criticized for holding excessive domestic government debt during economic downturns, which may have intensified the diabolic loop between sovereign and bank credit risks. By using a novel bank-level dataset covering the entire timeline of the Eurozone crisis, I first...

European banks have been criticized for holding excessive domestic government debt during the recent Eurozone crisis, which may have intensified the diabolic loop between sovereign and bank credit risks. By using a novel bank-level dataset covering the entire timeline of the Eurozone crisis, I...

The present paper investigates how an emerging market economy is affected when it suddenly faces a higher risk premium on international capital markets. We study this question empirically for five Latin American economies over the period 1994-2007 within a structural panel vector autoregression...