This paper discusses operational aspects of official emergency liquidity support to individual institutions under stress. It argues that properly designed lending procedures, clearly laid-out authority and accountability, as well as disclosures rules, will promote financial stability, reduce...

This paper evaluates ways to protect highly dollarized banking systems from systemic liquidity runs (such as the ones that took place recently in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay). In view of the limitations of available (private or official) insurance schemes, and the distortions introduced by...

This paper investigates whether developing and emerging market countries can implement monetary policies similar to those used by advanced countries during the recent global crisis - injecting significant amounts of money into the financial system without facing major short-run adverse...

This paper explores the relationship between the constitutional entrenchment of central bank independence and inflation performance. Empirical studies for developing countries have not found a relationship between central bank independence, proxied by the "de jure" independence established in...

This paper reviews central banks’ legal reform in Latin America during the 1990s and discusses the status of central bank independence in the region. Based on this information, it builds a simplified index of central bank independence which, in addition to the commonly used criteria of...

Using a central bank legislation database, this paper documents and analyzes worldwide institutional arrangements for central bank lending to the government and identifies international practices. Key findings are: (i) in most advanced countries, central banks do not finance government...

After widening substantially in the period preceding the global financial crisis, current account imbalances across the world have contracted to a significant extent. This paper analyzes the factors underlying this process of external adjustment. It finds that countries whose pre-crisis current...

This paper analyzes the impact of the global crisis on six South-Eastern European countries. The main objective is to compare macro-financial conditions and policies in the run-up to the crisis as well as to compare the policy responses to it, so as to highlight, inter alia, possible...

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,...

This paper sets out general principles for the design of financial stability frameworks, starting from an analysis of the objectives and tools of financial regulation. The paper then offers a comprehensive analysis of the costs and benefits of the two main models that have emerged for modern...