The foreign exchange reserves held by emerging market economies rose significantly in the last decade. This increase has been attributed to a desire by these countries to self-insure themselves against financial shocks. The rise in reserves may also reflect their concerns about the size of their...

This paper investigates Alan Greenspan's claim that capital markets can serve as a financial “spare tire” in the event of a banking crisis. We test the impact of stock market capitalization and activity on the output losses of 76 banking crises in 66 countries over the period of 1975-2008....

The paper investigates changes in IMF activities using the analytical framework of international public goods. Since its founding, the mix of IMF activities has changed greatly. IMF now promotes international financial stability, whose outputs are joint products with varying degrees of...

We analyze disagreements over de facto exchange-rate-regime classifications using three popular de facto regime data series. While there is a moderate degree of concurrence across classifications, disagreements are not uncommon, and they are not random. They are most prevalent in middle-income...