This paper investigates whether developing and emerging market countries can implement monetary policies similar to those used by advanced countries during the recent global crisis - injecting significant amounts of money into the financial system without facing major short-run adverse...

This paper investigates the causes of extreme fluctuations in commodity prices from 1990 to 2010. Analyzing two very distinct commodities-crude oil and fine wine, we find that macroeconomic factors are the main determinants of commodity prices. Although supply constraints have the expected...

This paper analyzes the impact of global and regional spillovers to GCC equity markets. GCC equity markets were impacted by spillovers from U.S. equity markets despite varying degrees of foreign participation. Spillovers from regional equity markets were also important but the magnitude of the...

New technologies are driving transformational changes in the global financial system. Virtual currencies (VCs) and the underlying distributed ledger systems are among these. VCs offer many potential benefits, but also considerable risks. VCs could raise efficiency and in the long run strengthen...

Using a new firm-level dataset with comprehensive information on Asian firms' FX liabilities, we show that Asia's nonfinancial corporate sector is vulnerable to a tightening of global financial conditions. Higher global interest rates and exchange rate depreciation increase the probability of...

Asia is at the forefront of the digital revolution, which promises a radical transformation of the global economy, and indeed of society itself, while at the same time threatening substantial disruptions and dislocation. For instance, workers worry that robots will make them obsolete, while...