The paper evaluates the key drivers of fiscal crises in a sample of countries from all three income groups—advanced, emerging, and low-income countries, using fiscal crisis data recently developed by the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. The empirical study focuses on three questions: (1) How...

In this paper, we investigate whether a firm’s composition of foreign liabilities matters for their resilience during economic turmoil and examine which characteristics determine a firm’s foreign capital structure. Using firm-level data, we corroborate previous findings from the...

We show that “preemptive” capital flow management measures (CFM) can reduce emerging markets and developing countries’ (EMDE) external finance premia during risk-off shocks, especially for vulnerable countries. Using a panel dataset of 56 EMDEs during 1996–2020 at monthly frequency, we...

The US economy is often referred to as the “banker to the world,” due to its unique role in supplying global reserve assets and funding foreign risky investment. This paper develops a general equilibrium model to analyze and quantify the contribution of this role to rising wealth...

The growing incidences of financial crises and their damage to the economy has led policy makers to sharpen the focus on financial stability analysis (FSA), crisis prevention and management over the past 10-15 years. The statistical world has reacted with a number of initiatives, but does more...

Benchmark following and portfolio rebalancing effects have often been cited when trying to explain international financial contagion phenomena. Using a dataset containing the country allocation of individual dedicated emerging market equity funds, we assess the relevance of mean-variance...

There is growing recognition that prolonged monetary policy easing of major economies can have extraterritorial spillovers, driving up financial system leverage in other countries. When faced with such a rise of threats to financial stability, what can countries do? Specifically, is there a role...

We construct sentiment indices for 20 countries from 1980 to 2019. Relying on computational text analysis, we capture specific language like 'fear', 'risk', 'hedging', 'opinion', and, 'crisis', as well as 'positive' and 'negative' sentiments, in news articles from the Financial Times. We assess...

Chile’s pension system came under close scrutiny in recent years. This paper takes stock of the adequacy of the system and highlights its challenges. Chile’s defined contribution system was quite influential when introduced, and was taken as an example by other countries. However, it is now...

The Greek pension system has been costly, complex, and distortive, which has contributed to Greece’s fiscal problems and discouraged labor force participation. Several attempts to reform the system faltered due to lack of implementation, pushback by vested interests, and court rulings leading...