This paper examines whether ESAF-supported programs during 1986-91 had significant independent effects on growth, inflation and the external debt service ratio. Econometric estimates of the Generalized Evaluation Estimator (GEE) identify statistically significant beneficial effects on output...

This paper examines the impact of the 2003-05 oil price increase on the balance of payments positions and IMF financing needs of low-income country oil importers. It finds that stronger exports reflecting favorable global conditions, a compression of oil import volumes due to the pass-through of...

This paper considers the behavior of the yield differential between government and nongovernment bonds in Italy between 1976 and 1988. It is shown that the trend increase of the differential observed in this period was significantly influenced by the deterioration of public finances, as...

The paper examines the behavior of stock returns in the Egyptian stock exchange, the efficiency of the market in pricing securities, and the relationship between returns and conditional volatility. GARCH(p,q)-M models estimated for the four best known daily indices indicate significant...

This study contributes to the literature on capital account crises in two ways. First, our analysis of crisis episodes between 1994 and 2002 establishes a clear relationship between the persistence of crises, their complexity, and the intensity of movement of key macroeconomic variables. Second,...

This paper examines the duration of capital account crises. We develop a new index to identify both the start and the end of these crises. Applying the index to a sample of 18 crisis episodes, we derive stylized facts on crisis duration and review the economic and financial circumstances that...

In light of the persistence of moderate inflation in many transition economies, this paper analyzes whether inflation resulted from insufficiently tight financial policies and wage pressures or from the protracted adjustment of relative prices. Using a new database for 21 countries, the effect...

In the past several years, the ten new Central and Eastern European members of the European Union have enjoyed rapid growth but frequently alongside growing external imbalances. Economists have pointed to rising vulnerabilities, but markets compressed sovereign bond yields. This paper examines...

This study extends the research on balance-of-payments crises by investigating the dynamics of the collapse of a crawling exchange rate in the presence of an explicit link between the fiscal deficit and domestic credit. It shows that such an exchange rate regime is characterized by two potential...