We study the characteristics of credit booms in emerging and industrial economies. Macro data show a systematic relationship between credit booms and economic expansions, rising asset prices, real appreciations and widening external deficits. Micro data show a strong association between credit...

A methodology for computing effective average tax rates on factor incomes and consumption using OECD data from national accounts and revenue statistics is described and applied to construct time series of tax rates for the group of seven largest industrialized countries. These tax rates are...

Financial globalization was off to a rocky start in emerging economies hit by Sudden Stops in the 1990s. The surge in foreign reserves since then is viewed as a New Merchantilism in which reserves are a war-chest for defense against Sudden Stops. We conduct a quantitative assessment of this...

This paper shows that the dominant view that the high variability of real exchange rates is due to movements in exchange rate-adjusted prices of tradable goods does not hold for Mexican data for periods with a managed exchange rate. The relative price of nontradables accounts for up to 70...

This paper looks at fiscal solvency and public debt sustainability in both emerging market and advanced countries. Evidence of fiscal solvency, in the form of a robust positive conditional relationship between public debt and the primary fiscal balance, is established in both groups of...

We conduct a cross-country empirical analysis of fiscal solvency based on dynamic stochastic general equilibrium conditions. The results show evidence of fiscal solvency, in the form of a robust positive conditional response of the primary balance to changes in public debt, in panels for...