This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms, covering 91 economies over 1973-2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of...

Economic performance in many emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) improved substantially over the past twenty years. The past decade was particularly good-for the first time EMDEs spent more time in expansion and had smaller downturns thanadvanced economies. In this paper we document...

This paper provides new evidence of the macroeconomic effects of public investment in advanced economies. Using public investment forecast errors to identify the causal effect of government investment in a sample of 17 OECD economies since 1985 and model simulations, the paper finds that...

Previous early-warning systems (EWSs) for currency crises have relied on models that require a priori dating of crises. This paper proposes an alternative EWS, based on a Markov-switching model, which identifies and characterizes crisis periods endogenously; this also allows the model to utilize...

Previous early-warning systems (EWSs) for currency crises have relied on models that require a priori dating of crises. This paper proposes an alternative EWS, based on a Markov-switching model, which identifies and characterizes crisis periods endogenously; this also allows the model to utilize...

A Markov regime switching model for exchange rate fluctuations, with time-varying transition probabilities, is used in constructing a monthly model for predicting currency crises in Southeast Asia. The approach is designed to avoid the estimation inconsistency that might arise from...

The study documents evidence of a quality effect of financial liberalization on allocative efficiency, which is measured by the dispersion in Tobin's Q across firms. Based on a simple model, the authors predict that financial liberalization, by equalizing access to credit, reduces the variation...

The IMF attempts to catalyze and stabilize private capital flows to emerging markets by providing public monitoring and emergency finance. In analyzing its role we contrast cases where banks and bondholders do the lending. Banks have a natural advantage in monitoring and creditor coordination,...

Despite the appreciation of the exchange rate, the eight Central and Eastern European countries (the CEE-8) that entered the European Union in May 2004 have achieved a decade of impressive export growth, expanding significantly their shares of world markets. Does this mean that the real exchange...

Large cohorts of young adults are poised to add to the working-age population of developing economies. Despite much interest in the consequent growth dividend, the size and circumstances of the potential gains remain under-explored. This study makes progress by focusing on India, which will be...