This paper proposes a new method for measuring the degree to which the domestic capital stock is self-financed. The main idea is to use the national accounts to construct a self-financing ratio, indicating what would have been the autarky stock of tangible capital supported by actual past...

This overview introduces and summarizes the findings of a practical volume on managing volatility and crises. The interest in these topics stems from the growing recognition that non-linearities tend to magnify the impact of economic volatility leading to large output and economic growth costs,...

We examine how financial expansion and contraction cycles affect the broader economy through their impact on real economic sectors in a panel of countries over 1960-2005. Periods of accelerated growth of the financial sector are more likely to be followed by abrupt financial contractions than...

This paper argues that the frequent failure of the debt swaps is not an accident. Instead, it follows from fundamental forces driven by the market's assessment of the scarcity of fiscal revenue relative to the demand for fiscal outlays. It follows from the observation that arbitrage forces...

This paper evaluates optimal public investment and fiscal policy for countries characterized by limited tax and debt capacities. We study a non stochastic CRS endogenous growth model where public expenditure is an input in the production process, in countries where distortions and limited...

We empirically assess the relative importance of various economic fundamentals in accounting for the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads of emerging markets during 2004-2012, which encompasses the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. Inflation, state fragility, external debt, and...

The global crisis of 2008 raises many questions regarding the long‐term response to crises. We know that households that lost access to credit, for example, were forced to adjust and increase saving. But, will households keep on saving more than they would have done otherwise had the global...

The purpose of this paper is to compare the behavior of an economy subject to labor contracts with an economy where the labor market clears in an auction manner. Such a comparison is intended to reveal the information content of real wages in a flexible economy. The analysis reveals two distinct...

The pronounced and persistent impact of the global financial crisis of 2008 motivates our empirical analysis of the role of institutions and macroeconomic fundamentals on countries' adjustment to shocks. Our empirical analysis shows that the associations of growth level, growth volatility,...

We study how the financial conditions in the Center Economies [the U.S., Japan, and the Euro area] impact other countries over the period 1986 through 2015. Our methodology relies upon a two-step approach. We focus on five possible linkages between the center economies (CEs) and the non-Center...