The financial crisis has re-ignited the fierce debate about the merits of financial globalization and its implications for growth, especially for developing countries. The empirical literature has not been able to conclusively establish the presumed growth benefits of financial integration....

This study replicates Ahn, Khandelwal, and Wei’s (2011) model of intermediary trade. The study produces two main results. First, the authors are able to reproduce empirical evidence for AKW’s three main predictions for Chinese exports. This is impressive because much of the data for their...

This paper employs a modern global value chain (GVC) decomposition framework to quantify economic interdependence among Asian economies and between Asia and the rest of the world. It pays special attention to the value-added relationships among three sets of economies: those belonging to both...

Most manufacturing activities use inputs from the financial and business services sectors. But these services sectors also compete for resources with manufacturing activities, provoking concerns about de-industrialization-financial services in industrial countries like the United States and the...

New financial technologies - including those underpinning cryptocurrencies - herald broader access to the financial system, quicker and more easily verifiable settlement of transactions and payments, and lower transaction costs. Domestic and cross-border payment systems are on the threshold of...

The 75 economies eligible for low-interest loans and grants from the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) had made notable progress against some important development objectives over the first two decades of this century. Despite this, on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic,...

This paper analyzes cycles in policy interest rates in 24 advanced economies over 1970-2024, combining a new application of business cycle methodology with rich time-series decompositions of the shocks driving rate movements. "Rate cycles" have gradually evolved over time, with less frequent...

This paper examines the global drivers of inflation in 55 countries over 1970-2022. The paper estimates a Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregression model for each country and assess the importance of several global (demand, supply, and oil price) and domestic shocks. It reports three main results....

Emerging market and developing economies have experienced recurrent episodes of rapid debt accumulation over the past fifty years. This paper examines the consequences of debt accumulation using a three-pronged approach: an event study of debt accumulation episodes in 100 emerging market and...

Although emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) weathered the global recession a decade ago relatively well, they now appear less well placed to cope with the substantial downside risks facing the global economy. In many EMDEs, the room for monetary and fiscal policies to respond to...