Using empirical analysis, complemented with case studies, this paper studies under which circumstances IMF programs manage to catalyze private capital flows into the countries concerned. While we found no catalysis in general, the situation differs very much depending on the type of capital flow...

Bond issuance increased moderately in the developed markets in 2016, partly due to the ongoing fiscal consolidation in the main economies. Placements by companies with better credit quality and by the banking sector were notably buoyant.Across countries, however, there were significant...

Changes in sovereign ratings are strongly asymmetric, as downgrades tend to be deeper and faster than upgrades. In other words, once a country loses its initial status it takes a long time to recover it. Using S&P data, we characterise “rating cycles” in terms of their duration and...

The total volume of bond issuance in 2017 remained similar to that in previous years, edging down slightly as a result of the drop in public-sector issuance. As usual, there were significant differences between the regions and quarters analysed. By quarters, the year got off to a good start,...

Existing empirical evidence indicates that remittances have a positive impact on a good number of development indicators of recipient countries. Yet when flows are too large relative to the size of the recipient economies, as those observed in a number of Latin American countries, they may also...