Author/Editor: Emine Boz, Ceyhun Bora Durdu, Nan Li.

Release Date: October, 2012

Emerging economies are characterized by higher consumption and real wage variability relative to output and a strongly countercyclical current account. A real business cycle model of a small open more...

Author/Editor: Jaromir Benes, Michael Kumhof.

Release Date: August, 2012

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary more...

Author/Editor: Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Gee Hee Hong.

Release Date: August, 2012

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes and average prices paid by consumers (effective prices) in a dataset containing prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers more...

Author/Editor: Deniz Igan, Prakash Loungani.

Release Date: August, 2012

Housing cycles and their impact on the financial system and the macroeconomy have become the center of attention following the global financial crisis. This paper documents the characteristics of more...

Author/Editor: Nicoletta Batini, Giovanni Callegari, Giovanni Melina.

Release Date: July, 2012

The output effects of 2009 fiscal expansions have been hotly debated. But the discussion of fiscal multipliers is even more relevant now that several European countries have had to quickly retract more...

Author/Editor: Gustavo Adler, Sebastian Sosa.

Release Date: June, 2012

Shocks stemming from Brazil - the large neighbor in South America - have historically been a source of concern for policy-makers in other countries of the region. This paper studies the importance of more...

Author/Editor: Rabah Arezki, Mustapha K. Nabli.

Release Date: May, 2012

This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels more...

Author/Editor: Shiv Dixit, Maxwell Opoku-Afari.

Release Date: May, 2012

This paper uses a set of routinely collected high-frequency data in low-income countries (LICs) to construct an aggregate and a comprehensive index of economic activity which could serve (i) as a more...

Author/Editor: Marco Airaudo, Luis-Felipe Zanna.

Release Date: May, 2012

We present an extensive analysis of the consequences for global equilibrium determinacy in flexible-price open economies of implementing active interest rate rules, i.e., monetary rules where the more...

Author/Editor: Jorge A. Chan-Lau.

Release Date: May, 2012

Dynamic provisions could help to enhance the solvency of individual banks and reduce procyclicality. Accomplishing these objectives depends on country-specific features of the banking system, more...

Author/Editor: Yasser Abdih, Adolfo Barajas, Ralph Chami, Christian Ebeke.

Release Date: April, 2012

This paper identifies a remittances channel that transmits exogenous shocks, such as business cycles in remittance-sending countries, to the public finances of remittance-receiving countries. Using more...

Author/Editor: Reinout De Bock, Alexander Demyanets.

Release Date: March, 2012

This paper assesses the vulnerability of emerging markets and their banks to aggregate shocks. We find significant links between banks' asset quality, credit and macroeconomic aggregates. Lower more...

Author/Editor: Pau Rabanal, Juan F. Rubio-Ramirez.

Release Date: January, 2012

Real exchange rates exhibit important low-frequency fluctuations. This makes the analysis of real exchange rates at all frequencies a more sound exercise than the typical business cycle one, which more...

Author/Editor: Sebastian Sosa, Gustavo Adler.

Release Date: December, 2011

Commodity-exporting countries have significantly benefited from the commodity price boom of recent years. At the current juncture, however, uncertain global economic prospects have raised questions more...

Author/Editor: Jiri Podpiera.

Release Date: December, 2011

Emerging markets are particularly vulnerable to boom-bust credit cycles, due to excessive capital flows, shallow equity markets, and companies'' high leverage and open FX positions. While the policy more...

Author/Editor: Serhan Cevik.

Release Date: December, 2011

This paper investigates the empirical characteristics of business cycles and the extent of cyclical comovement in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, using various measures of more...

Author/Editor: Ruy Lama, Carlos Urrutia.

Release Date: December, 2011

We build a small open economy, real business cycle model with labor market frictions to evaluate the role of employment protection in shaping business cycles in emerging economies. The model features more...

Author/Editor: Oral Williams, Kamiar Mohaddes.

Release Date: December, 2011

This paper uses a pairwise approach to investigate the main factors that have been driving inflation differentials in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region for the past two decades. The results more...

Author/Editor: Deniz Igan, Heedon Kang.

Release Date: December, 2011

With another real estate boom-bust bringing woes to the world economy, a quest for a better policy toolkit to deal with these boom-busts has begun. Macroprudential measures could be in such a more...

Author/Editor: Philippe Bracke.

Release Date: October, 2011

This paper analyzes the duration of house price upturns and downturns in the last 40 years for 19 OECD countries. I provide two sets of results, one pertaining to the average length and the other to more...