The paper aims at assessing the capital needs of Eastern Europe in catching up to EC standards of living using the framework of a CES (constant elasticity of substitution) production function model. This function, parameterized on the EC, is assumed to apply with certain inefficiency factors in...

The paper describes the debt burden of low-income countries and the traditional mechanisms that have been implemented by the international community to alleviate this burden. While these mechanisms are sufficient to reduce the external debts of many heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) to...

This paper reports the main findings of a pilot project launched in July 2014 by the IMF's Statistics Department to test augmenting the IMF's financial soundness indicators (FSIs) with concentration and distribution measures (CDMs) to capture tail risks, concentrations, variations in...

In this paper, we consider incidences of arrears to the IMF, focusing on protracted arrears cases and attempt to identify determinants of their occurrence. We use narrative and formal methods. In addition, we analyze determinants of the duration of arrears. We find that previous arrears,...

The withdrawal of correspondent banking relationships (CBRs) remains a concern for the international community because, in affected jurisdictions, the decline could have potential adverse consequences on international trade, growth, financial inclusion, and the stability and integrity of the...