Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1992, several low-income countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) accumulated substantial external debt in a short time span, about half of which is owed to multilateral financial institutions. Three factors contributed to the current...

In previous studies it has been found that new foreign investment is significantly related to the stock of existing investment in the country/region. This paper's contribution is the finding that a Japanese firm's new investment in an emerging economy is positively correlated with its previous...

Previous studies find that the interest rate term spread predicts real U.S. economic activity. We show that this relationship breaks down for the 1990s and suggest that its earlier success was due to high and volatile inflation. We find, however, that the high-yield spread (HYS) between "junk...

The budget is an expression of political rather than economic priorities. We confirm this proposition for a group of new and potential members of the European Union, finding that politics dominates. The contemporary practice of democracy can increase budget deficits through not only ideological...

Using recent advances in the classification of exchange rate regimes, this paper finds no support for the popular bipolar view that countries will tend over time to move to the polar extremes of free float or rigid peg. Rather, intermediate regimes have shown remarkable durability. The analysis...

At the April 2003 meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committees, it was decided to further encourage the contractual approach to smoothing the process of sovereign debt restructuring by encouraging the more widespread use of collective action clauses (CACs) in international...

An objective of IMF-supported programs is to help countries improve their access to international capital markets. In this paper, we examine the issue whether IMF-supported programs influence the ability of developing country issuers to tap international bond markets and whether they improve...

In this paper, we examine the IMF's role in maintaining the access of emerging market economies to international capital markets. We find evidence that both macroeconomic aggregates and capital flows improve following the adoption of an IMF-supported program, although they may initially...

Income earned by the branches and subsidiaries of multinational firms can be either reinvested in the host country or repatriated as dividends to the firms' headquarters. Despite the rapid growth of foreign direct investment in the 1990s, there has been relatively limited analysis of the...

During the 1980s, U.S. and Japanese multinationals were attracted by some similar country characteristics: low wage inflation, low country risk, good infrastructure, and an educated work force. Both groups of investors displayed a persistence, being strongly attracted to locations with...