While inflation differentials in a monetary union can be benign, reflecting a catch-up process, or an adjustment mechanism to asymmetric shocks or different business cycles, they may also indicate distortions related to inefficiencies in domestic product and labor markets that amplify or make...

Public debt in the Middle East increased during the mid-1990s mainly because of fiscal expansions. It decreased in recent years, thanks to high oil revenue, economic growth, some primary non-oil fiscal adjustment, and debt relief. While countries in the Middle East appear to have adequately...

This paper studies the detrimental effect of sudden stops on the growth of Thai firms' fixed assets. We focus on the fixed assets adjustment that firms undertake at times of financial constraints. We derive our results from balance sheet data for 284 nonfinancial Thai listed firms. Our data...

There has recently been a proliferation of new quantitative tools as part of various initiatives to improve the monitoring of systemic risk. The "SysMo" project takes stock of the current toolkit used at the IMF for this purpose. It offers detailed and practical guidance on the use of current...

This paper presents ways for China to achieve its climate goals while also attain high-quality growth—growth that is balanced, inclusive, and green. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model that is calibrated to China, multiple scenarios are considered that incorporate a sequence...

How important is foreign knowledge for domestic innovation outcomes? How is this relation shaped by globalization and the attendant intensification of international competition? Our empirical approach extends the previous literature by analyzing a large panel comprising industries in both...

The paper investigates whether the market size of a regional trade agreement (RTA) is a determinant of foreign direct investment (FDI) received by countries participating in the RTA. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of 71 developing countries during the period 1980-99. Evidence is found...

This paper empirically investigates the impact of tariffs when production is organized in global value chains. Using global input-output matrices, we construct four different tariff measures that capture the direct and indirect exposure to tariffs at different stages of the production chain for...

Background paper prepared for the October 2020 IMF World Economic Outlook. This paper provides a detailed presentation of the simulation results from the October 2020 IMF World Economic Outlook chapter 3 and an additional scenario with carbon pricing only for comparison with the comprehensive...

Based on an empirical gravity model of sectoral bilateral trade, we uncover three features of bilateral trade balances. First, the difficulty of gravity models in fitting the observed level of bilateral balances is likely due to the presence of unobservable bilateral trade costs. Second, the...