During the 1990s, Emerging Europe and Central Asia (ECA) chose a model of rapid financial development emphasizing bank credit expansion often funded by foreign capital. Although boosting financial inclusion of firms and households, the model was accompanied by lower efficiency and increased...

Although keeping bank supervision independent from macroprudential supervision may ensure more checks and balances, placing bank supervision in the central bank could exploit synergies with macroprudential supervision. This paper studies whether placing microprudential supervision of banks,...

This book develops a holistic appraisal methodology to ensure that economic benefits of investments in transport corridors are amplified and more widely spread, and possible negative impacts such as congestion, environmental degradation, and other unintended consequences are minimized. It...

Drawing on the lessons from the global financial crisis and especially from its impact on the banking systems of Eastern Europe, the paper proposes a new practical approach to macroprudential stress testing. The proposed approach incorporates: (i) macroeconomic stress scenarios generated from...

Natural disasters could constitute a major shock to public finances and debt sustainability because of their impact on output and the need for reconstruction and relief expenses. This paper uses a panel vector autoregressive model to systematically estimate the impact of geological, climatic,...

Competitive passenger rail can help workers access new or better jobs. This paper studies the wider economic impacts on local unemployment of the liberalized passenger rail between Ostrava, the third-biggest city in the Czech Republic, and Prague, its capital. The local impacts are estimated at...

This paper uses synchronization indicators of domestic and foreign fundamentals to choose suitable currency allocation of public external debt. The selection of explanatory variables for exchange rate volatility is motivated using a New Keynesian Policy model that predicts that not only...

This paper examines the effect of Basel III implementation on the access to finance of small and medium-size enterprises in 32 emerging markets and developing economies. Analyzing rich, repeated cross-sectional data and a panel of matched firm-bank data in a difference-in-differences setting...

This paper collects meta data on transport corridor projects financed by the Asian Development Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency, and World Bank and links them to one important wider economic benefit -- local economic activity. The meta data cover 47 projects in 16 countries, with...

Natural disasters may constitute a major shock to public finances and debt sustainability because of their impact on output and the need for government response with reconstruction and relief expenses. The question arises of whether governments can use financial development policy as the means...