We develop a simple approach to identify economic news and monetary shocks at a high frequency. The approach is used to examine financial market developments in the United States following the Federal Reserve’s May 22, 2013 taper talk suggesting that it would begin winding down its...

In this paper we examine the channels through which innovations to policy variables— policy rates or monetary aggregates—affect such macroeconomic variables as output and inflation in Sri Lanka. The effectiveness of monetary policy instruments is judged through the prism of...

This paper analyzes market reactions to the 2013–14 Fed announcements relating to tapering of asset purchases and their relationship to macroeconomic fundamentals and country economic and financial structures. The study uses daily data on exchange rates, government bond yields, and stock...

This paper examines how Japan’s long-term interest rates and Japanese banks’ interest rate risk exposures may evolve under Abenomics. Results from a panel regression analysis for major advanced economies shows that long-term government bond yields in Japan are determined to a large extent by...

This paper highlights the changing collateral landscape and how it may shape the global demand/supply for collateral. We first identify the key collateral pools (relative to the “old†collateral space) and associated collateral velocities. Post-Lehman and continuing into the European...

This paper explores the extent to which macroprudential tools can be used to manage banking sector risks in Mongolia, a commodity producing country exposed to both procyclical and cross-sectional financial sector risks. Loose fiscal policy, rising credit activity, and heightened risk...

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across 18 advanced economies over the past 40 years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To address these...

Financial depth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been uneven over the last two decades. The WAEMU countries are lagging behind other regions, particularly the High Growth Non-oil Exporters (HGNOEs) group. We use two complementary methodologies to compare the two groups of countries. In a panel of...

The IMF’s Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is used to examine the scope for structural reforms in the euro area to offset the negative impact of fiscal consolidation required to put public debt back on a sustainable path. The results suggest that structural reforms in core...

We examine the effects of unconventional monetary policy (UMP) events in the United States on asset price risk using risk-neutral density functions estimated from options prices. Based on an event study including a key exchange rate, an equity index, and five commodities, we find that “tail...