This paper presents two approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or a permanent phenomenon. The two approaches-the time series behavior of credit outstanding and a two-stage program selection and access...

This paper presents a method for visualizing competitive market structures based on scanner panel date where asymmetries are taken into account. For this, I combined consumer choice models based on mixed logit models with three-mode principal component analysis. This approach can be used to...

Even for a well-trained statistician the construction of a histogram for a given real-valued set is a sifficult problem. It is even more difficult to construct a fully automatic procedure which specifies the number and widths of the binss in a satisfactory manner for a wide range of data sets....

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) is a key source of forecasts of global economic conditions. It is therefore important to review the performance of these forecasts against both actual outcomes and alternative forecasts. This paper conducts a series of statistical tests to evaluate the quality of...

This paper studies whether compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCPs) improves bank soundness. The authors find a significant and positive relationship between bank soundness (measured with Moody's financial strength ratings) and compliance with principles...

The main objective of this paper is to quantify the relationship between the global economic environment and the number of Stand-By Arrangements (SBAs). The results suggest that oil prices, world interest rates, and the global business cycle are the most influential indicators that affect the...

This paper provides the first empirical analysis of the cross-country relationship between a direct measure of competitive conduct of financial institutions and banking system fragility. Using the Panzar and Rosse H-Statistic as a measure for competition in 38 countries during 1980-2003, we...