We discuss issues of real estate price bubble, the extent of wealth effects, affordability, financial deepening and credit market risks. Our simulations indicate that given current wealth levels, cost of credit and maturity, average homes are not affordable by average consumers. The market...

This paper studies implications of intermediation costs in credit markets. The presence of intermediation costs increases the amount of risky projects therefore results in financial fragility. Moreover, for an open economy that has a perfectly liberal capital account, prudent firms finance their...

This paper examines the impact of the recent global crisis on emerging market economies (EMs). Our cross-country analysis shows that the impact of the crisis was more pronounced in those EMs that had initial weaker fundamentals and greater financial and trade linkages. This effect is observed...

Domestic absorption cycles are relevant in assessment and design of fiscal policies. Our cross-country analysis covers 59 advanced and emerging countries for the 1990-2009 period. We show that ignoring domestic absorption cycles leads to biased fiscal stance indicators, for both advanced and...

This paper studies implications of intermediation costs in credit markets. The presence of intermediation costs increases the amount of risky projects therefore results in financial fragility. Moreover, for an open economy that has a perfectly liberal capital account, prudent firms finance their...

We discuss issues of real estate price bubble, the extent of wealth effects, affordability, financial deepening and credit market risks. Our simulations indicate that given current wealth levels, cost of credit and maturity, average homes are not affordable by average consumers. The market...