This paper discusses key findings of the Fifth Review under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) for The Gambia. The Gambia’s external debt position has worsened recently. The global economic crisis is undermining growth and the external balance. Performance on the...

This paper examines the behavior of bank soundness indicators during episodes of brisk loan growth, using bank-level data for central and eastern Europe and controlling for the feedback effect of credit growth on bank soundness. No evidence is found that rapid loan expansion has weakened banks...

How do financial markets respond to concerns over debt sustainability and the level of public debt in emerging markets? We introduce a measure of debt sustainability – the difference between the debt stabilizing primary balance and the primary balance–in an otherwise standard spread...

This paper examines the relationship between adherence to international standards of good practice in policy-making and two key indicators of access to capital markets and the cost of this access: spreads and sovereign ratings. In contrast to other work, this study reviews a broad set of...

We present a model of the optimal level of international reserves for a small open economy that is vulnerable to sudden stops in capital flows. Reserves allow the country to smooth domestic absorption in response to sudden stops, but yield a lower return than the interest rate on the country's...

We propose using a Bayesian time-varying coefficient model estimated with Markov chain-Monte Carlo methods to measure contagion empirically. The proposed measure works in the joint presence of heteroskedasticity and omitted variables and does not require knowledge of the timing of the crisis. It...

Low-income countries continue to face significant challenges in meeting their vast development needs while maintaining a sustainable debt position, even after many of these countries have benefited from substantial debt relief. These challenges are further exacerbated by changes in the financial...

This paper investigates whether the linkages between economic growth in Russia and growth in other countries in the region have weakened over time, particularly following the 1998 Russian crisis. It specifies an econometric model that includes standard growth determinants as well as Russian...

This paper reviews recent advances in the specification and estimation of Bayesian Vector Autoregressive models (BVARs). After describing the Bayesian principle of estimation, we first present the methodology originally developed by Litterman (1986) and Doan et al. (1984) and review alternative...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the empirical relationship between corporate leverage—and other indicators of financial health—and investment in Israel, using dynamic panel data techniques. The results suggest that weak balance sheets may well have contributed to the investment...