The paper examines progress with the external rebalancing of euro area deficit countries. Relative prices are adjusting at different pace across countries and with different compositions of wage cuts and labor shedding. There is so far limited evidence of resource re-allocation from non-tradable...

This paper presents two approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or a permanent phenomenon. The two approaches-the time series behavior of credit outstanding and a two-stage program selection and access...

This paper builds a model of a sovereign borrower that has access to credit from private sector creditors and an IFI. Private sector creditors and the IFI offer different debt contracts that are modelled based on the institutional frameworks of these two types of debt. We analyze the decisions...

This paper-consisting of a regional study and seven country studies-reviews the state of domestic public debt markets in Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama as at end-2005. Although they account for the lion's share of capital markets, regional...

A new aggregation scheme used to measure the sources of fiscal financing of indebted countries suggests that there was a fundamental improvement in the seniority of domestic debt at the expense of foreign bank debt during the late 1980s. We argue that this was the revenue maximizing response of...

This paper reviews trends in capital flows and capital-like flows such as official grants and remittances to low-income countries over the period 1981-2006. The survey reveals a broadbased increase in such flows as a share of low-income country GDP across major regions, countries with differing...

Balance-sheet analysis (BSA) complements traditional flow-oriented macroeconomic analysis by gauging mismatches in aggregate and sectoral balance sheets of an economy. Enabled by recent progress in data availability, this paper applies BSA to Georgia, focusing on currency mismatches. In...

The paper lays out an analytical framework for understanding crises in emerging markets based on examination of stock variables in the aggregate balance sheet of a country and the balance sheets of its main sectors (assets and liabilities). It focuses on the risks created by maturity, currency,...

Japan is facing a sizable fiscal imbalance against a backdrop of weak trend growth and growing external imbalances in the world economy. This paper examines the possible impact of fiscal adjustment and productivity-enhancing structural reforms on the Japanese and world economies. Simulation...

This paper addresses the important question of how far a government will run down its stock of foreign reserves in a defense of a fixed exchange rate. An optimizing model of currency crisis is presented in which the decision of whether or not to borrow in a defense of a peg is explicitly...