This paper describes sovereign credit ratings in emerging markets both for a specific year and over time, using quantitative explanatory variables. It turns out that rating adjustments have been worse than what economic fundamentals justify for some countries and also more frequently altered,...

In light of the recent financial crises in the emerging markets, the coming-into-force of the financial services agreement under the GATS has been considered a success. While the agreement provides for little new liberalization but rather formalizes the status quo, it was feared that governments...

The divergence between increasingly supranational financial markets on the one hand and still largely national supervisory structures on the other gives rise to tensions which reduce the effectiveness of the supervision. It lies in the interests of both the public and the private sector that the...

We present a model of bilateral real exchange rate determination based on different theories that can be combined into a common statistical framework. Although eclectic, the approach is successfully used to shape a final specification which performs surprisingly well when out of sample exercises...

This paper contributes to the debate on the efficacy of IMF's catalytic finance in preventing financial crises. Extending Morris and Shin (2006), we consider that the IMF's intervention policy usually exerts a signaling effect on private creditors and that several interventions in sequence may...

The business literature suggests that exporters either use trade intermediaries or own foreign sales representations. Standard trade models are silent about this choice. We develop a model where producers differ with respect to competitive advantage and where trade intermediaries arise...

Mit etwa 2% war die Zuwachsrate der Weltproduktion 1998 nur noch halb so hoch wie im Vorjahr. Von einer rezessiven Entwicklung blieben vor allem die USA und die EWU-Länder infolge einer robusten Inlandsnachfrage verschont. Die weltwirtschaftliche Lage ist bei anhaltend volatilen Finanzmärkten...