We assess the spot price forecasting performance of 10 commodity futures at various horizons up to two years and test whether this performance is affected by market conditions. We reject efficient markets based on in-sample tests but, out-of-sample, we find that the forecast from the futures...

BRICs development financing flows have increased significantly and are expected to become more prominent in the post-crisis era. We investigate the potential implications on the country-allocation of loan commitments and the degree of concessionality using a panel vector autoregression model and...

We examine the risks to bank soundness associated with credit booms in a large set of countries. Using bank-level data in 90 countries between 1995 and 2005, we analyze the relationship between credit growth and bank soundness taking into account the potential two-way causality. We find that,...

This paper uses an econometric model of residential property prices in Hong Kong SAR to assess the effectiveness of alternative policies in slowing the increase in property prices. The rapid rise in property prices is well explained by macroconomic fundamentals; real GDP per capital, real...

We analyze the link between nonperforming loans (NPL) and macroeconomic performance using two complementary approaches. First, we investigate the macroeconomic determinants of NPL in panel regressions and confirm that adverse macroeconomic developments are associated with rising NPL. Second, we...

This paper investigates the short-term effects of fiscal consolidation on economic activity in OECD economies. We examine the historical record, including Budget Speeches and IMFdocuments, to identify changes in fiscal policy motivated by a desire to reduce the budget deficit and not by...

This paper examines the empirical behavior of conventional bank deposit rates and the rate of return on retail Islamic profit-and-loss sharing (PLS) investment accounts in Malaysia and Turkey, using monthly data from January 1997 to August 2010. The analysis shows that conventional bank deposit...

This paper investigates economic, political, and institutional constraints to fiscal policy implementation in sub-saharan Africa. We find that planned fiscal adjustments or expansions are less likely to be implemented the larger they are, the more inaccurate the growth forecasts they are based...

There are 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with floating exchange rate regimes, de jure. Some target the money supply or the inflation rate; others practice "managed floating." Statistical analysis on monthly data for the past decade reveals that in most cases these exchange rate regimes...