A banking system module is incorporated into the Central Bank of Barbados`s multisectoral macroeconomic forecasting model, and a medium-term forecast is generated for bank capitalization, profitability, liquidity and nonperforming loans. Stress tests are performed for the first year of the...

The international business and financial services (IBFS) industry in the Caribbean, though miniscule as a proportion of the global financial markets, is the principal avenue for diversifying foreign exchange earnings for many Caribbean countries. In the smaller countries it is a major...

Insufficiency of foreign exchange may at times constrain the growth of small open economies which lack the domestic resources to produce import substitutes for their consumption, investment and input needs. This study explores the foreign exchange constraint in three small open Caribbean...

The experiences of Caribbean Economic Community countries show that exchange rate depreciation in these countries is inflationary, and that, while changes in the relative prices of tradables may affect exports, tourism, and imports, nominal exchange rate changes have no predictable effect on...

This paper assesses how various types of financial risk such as credit risk, market risk, and liquidity risk affect banking stability in the ten countries that joined the European Union most recently, and eight neighboring countries. It also examines how the quality of supervisory standards may...

This paper is concerned with the design of institutional arrangements for low inflation in small open economies. In the real world of information asymmetries, uncertain expectations and changeable preferences, it is not enough to create an autonomous and publicly accountable central bank. In...

This paper suggests a strategy designed to make best use of the available quantitative techniques of financial sector assessment. It incorporates early warning systems, financial sector forecasts, stress tests for systemically important financial institutions, interbank contagion analysis, and...

Indicators of economic activity provide key inputs into policymakers', business persons', investors' and consumers' decision making processes. However, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) currently only publishes annual gross domestic product (GDP) series for each of the eight member...

This research reviews the effects of fiscal expenditures on economic output in a non-linear fashion for the Barbados economy. Using the Markov-Switching methodology, fiscal expenditure multipliers are estimated for each stage of the business cycle. The data indicates that a three-regime model is...