We estimate the pricing of sovereign risk for sixty countries based on fiscal space (debt/tax;deficits/tax) and other economic fundamentals over 2005-10. We measure how accurately themodel predicts sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads, focusing in particular on the fivecountries in the...

We investigate the relationship between economic growth and lagged internationalcapital flows, disaggregated into FDI, portfolio investment, equity investment, and shorttermdebt. We follow about 100 countries during 1990-2010 when emerging marketsbecame more integrated into the international...

We define the notion of a ‘de facto fiscal space’ of a country as the inverse of the tax-years itwould take to repay the public debt. Specifically, we measure the outstanding public debtrelative to the de facto tax base, where the latter measures the realized tax collection,...

This note investigates the impact of greater income inequality on the tax base, on the defactofiscal space, and the sovereign spreads. Using data from 50 countries in 2005 and in 2010,we find that higher income inequality is associated with a lower tax base, lower de-facto fiscalspace, and...

This paper studies the cross-country variation of the fiscal stimulus and the exchange rate adjustmentpropagated by the global crisis of 2008-9, identifying the role of economic structure in accounting for theheterogeneity of response. We find that greater de facto fiscal space prior to the...

Developing Asia experienced a sharp surge in foreign currency reserves prior to the 2008-9 crisis.The global crisis has been associated with an unprecedented rise of swap agreements betweencentral banks of larger economies and their counterparts in smaller economies. We explorewhether such swap...

This paper investigates the association between greater income inequality, de-facto fiscalspace, and sovereign spreads. Using data from 50 countries in 2007, in 2009 and in 2011, wefind that higher income inequality is associated with a lower tax base, lower de-facto fiscalspace, and higher...

A key challenge facing most emerging market economies today is how to simultaneouslymaintain monetary independence, exchange rate stability and financial integration subjectto the constraints imposed by the Trilemma, in an era of widespread globalization. In thispaper we overview and contrast...

We study the curious patterns of gold holding and trading by central banksduring 1979-2010. With the exception of several discrete step adjustments,central banks keep maintaining passive stocks of gold, independently of thepatterns of the real price of gold. We also observe the synchronization...

This paper investigates the factors explaining exchange market pressures (EMP) and thehoarding and use of international reserves (IR) by emerging markets during the 2000s, as the GreatModeration turned to the 2008-9 global crisis and great recession. According to our results, bothfinancial and...