This article presents a range of tools and indicators for analysing fiscal vulnerabilities and risks for advanced economies. The analysis covers key short-, medium- and long-term dimensions. Short-term pressures are captured by assessing (i) gross funding needs, (ii) market perceptions of...

Recurring financial crises in the semi-periphery have raised serious question marks concerning the role of the IMF in the era of financial globalization, particularly in the aftermath of the Asian Crisis of 1997. The present paper attempts to provide a critical and at the same time a balanced...

Rapid credit growth in Bulgaria, Romania, and Ukraine has been driven by successful macroeconomic stabilization, robust growth, and capital inflows. While financial deepening is both expected and welcome, the recent expansions appear to have been excessive, as evidenced by widening current...

This paper discusses how the choice of central banks' operating targets influences the use of their monetary policy instruments and how the latter affect the central bank's balance sheet. This is of particular interest, since the monetary conditionality in IMF-supported programs has...

This paper provides some practical advice on establishing initial conditions in support of an inflation-targeting monetary framework. These conditions are divided into four areas: a mandate in support of an inflation objective and accountability for achieving this objective; macroeconomic...

This paper evaluates weekly out-of-sample volatility forecast performance of univariate Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) model compared to the benchmark model of GARCH(1,1) for ten emerging stock markets. The results show that the MIDAS model offers a statistically better forecasting precision during...