We estimate ex post returns to emerging market debt by combining secondary-market prices with observed flows based on World Bank data. From 1970-2000, returns averaged 9 percent per annum, about the same as returns on a ten-year U.S. treasury bond. This reflects the combined effect of the 1980s...

We estimate ex post returns to emerging market debt by combining secondary-market prices with observed flows based on World Bank data. From 1970-2000, returns averaged 9 percent per annum, about the same as returns on a ten-year U.S. treasury bond. This reflects the combined effect of the 1980s...

This paper analyzes the performance and development of the Mexican pension annuity market established as a consequence of the 1997 pension reform. The Mexican experience displays interesting characteristics providing lessons for other countries that still need to design the decumulation phase of...

Stress testing is a useful and increasingly popular, yet sometimes misunderstood, method of analyzing the resilience of financial systems to adverse events. This paper aims to help demystify stress tests and illustrate their strengths and weaknesses. Using an Excel-based template with...

Using a production function method, this paper assesses the impact of the global crisis on the potential growth of Australia and New Zealand. The two countries have not been hit hard by the global crisis, but have large net external liabilities. The paper finds that the main negative impact of...

With a fixed peg to the U.S. dollar for more than three decades, the tourism-dependent Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) countries share a close economic relationship with the U.S. This paper analyzes the impact of the United States on ECCU business cycles and identifies possible...

Conventional wisdom has held that a fixed exchange rate regime induces more fiscal discipline, but Tornell and Velasco (1995, 1998) argue the opposite. Using a dynamic model with fragmented fiscal policymaking, this paper evaluates the two arguments in a single framework and shows that (1)...

This paper examines the size and source of external spillovers to Australia and New Zealand based on a structural vector autoregression (VAR) approach. It finds that during the last decade shocks from emerging Asia have become more important than those from the United States in affecting...

Facing electoral uncertainty, a government chooses its exchange regime in a trade-off among three incentives: (i) tying the hands of its opponent should it lose the election; (ii) facilitating its own future policy implementation should it win the election; and (iii) increasing its chance of...