The U.S. is beset by weak economic growth, ballooning debt and stubbornly high unemployment but the collapse of the housing bubble that spurred the 2008-2009 global financial crisis was more a consequence than a cause of what is wrong. The real culprit was and remains poor policymaking in the...

The recent Euro area crisis, which has originally been driven mainly by macroeconomic factors, has had a strong impact also on financial markets leading internationally to what is referred as contagion, that is co-movements among asset prices which have been excessive respect to fundamentals....

The European Union (EU) has traditionally been an important economic partner for Asia. In addition to absorbing a significant share of the region's exports, the EU has been a major source of foreign direct investment and other capital flows into the region. In light of such close economic...

In 2007, countries in the euro periphery were enjoying stable growth, low deficits, and low spreads. Then the financial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recessions, raising their deficits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and,...

We propose a continuous time model of nominal debt and investigate the role of inflation credibility in the potential for self-fulfilling debt crises. Inflation is costly, but reduces the real value of outstanding debt without the full punishment of default. With high inflation credibility,...

This paper presents the results of a counterfactual exercise that aims at quantifying the contribution to the evolution of bad debts made by the two recessions that have hit the Italian economy since 2008. The counterfactual simulations are performed using the Bank of Italy's Quarterly Model...

We study the time-varying dependence of sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads on real-time, country-specific macro indicators during the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Macro fundamentals explain 66% of the time-series variance of CDS spreads, but the time variation in macro sensitivities...

We revisit self-fulfilling rollover crises by exploring the potential uncertainty introduced by a gap in time (however small) between an auction of new debt and the payment of maturing liabilities. It is well known (Cole and Kehoe, 2000) that the lack of commitment at the time of auction to...

A key objective of fiscal policy is to maintain the sustainability of public finances and avoid crises. Remarkably, there is very limited analysis on fiscal crises. This paper presents a new database of fiscal crises covering different country groups, including low-income developing countries...