We isolate a U.S. dollar currency premium by comparing corporate bonds issued in the dollar and the euro by firms o utside t he U .S. a nd e uro a rea. We make s everal empirical observations that dissect the perceived advantage of borrowing in the dollar. First, while the dollar dominates...

Shocks stemming from Brazil - the large neighbor in South America - have historically been a source of concern for policy-makers in other countries of the region. This paper studies the importance of Brazil's influence on its neighboring economies, documenting trade linkages over the last two...

This study describes a semi-structural New-Keynesian Quarterly Projection Model (QPM) for the WAEMU zone. In the context of a fixed exchange rate regime and relatively tight capital controls, the central bank for the WAEMU monetary union (Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest,...

Belarus experienced a sequence of currency crises during 2009-2014. Our empirical results, based on a structural econometric model, suggest that the activist wage policy and extensive state program lending (SPL) conflicted with the tightly managed exchange rate regime and suppressed monetary...

We analyze the costs and benefits of full dollarization compared to its closest alternative, a currency board, quantifying for Argentina where possible. Potential advantages include lower borrowing costs and deeper integration into world markets. One cost is the transfer of seigniorage to the...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This systemic risk like no other at a time of record-breaking debt levels, especially among nonfinancial firms across the world, could exacerbate corporate vulnerabilities, deepen macro-financial...

The assessment provides evidence of market segmentation across Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), leading to excess liquidity, and an uneven playing field for Islamic banks that might affect their growth. Liquidiy management has been a long-standing concern in...

This paper discusses proposals for common euro area sovereign securities. Such instruments can potentially serve two functions: in the short-term, stabilize financial markets and banks and, in the medium-term, help improve the euro area economic governance framework through enhanced fiscal...

Do changes in monetary policy affect inflation and output in the East African Community (EAC)? We find that (i) Monetary Transmission Mechanism (MTM) tends to be generally weak when using standard statistical inferences, but somewhat strong when using non-standard inference methods; (ii) when...

Many central banks in low-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are modernising their monetary policy frameworks. Standard statistical procedures have had limited success in identifying the channels of monetary transmission in such countries. Here we take a narrative approach, following Romer...