Financial Structure: The Issues

The IMF will host a conference on May 21 which will take stock of structural issues such as, altering the permissible activities of financial institutions; and adapting the balance of banks and capital markets and shadow banks in the financial system.

Rethinking Macro Policy: First Steps, Early Lessons

Watch webcasts of the sessions and download presentations by the participants of the recent IMF conference on 'Rethinking Macro Policy II: First Steps and Early Lessons.'

Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy

Olivier Blanchard blogs on the second conference devoted to rethinking macroeconomic policy in the wake of the crisis.

Guest bloggers George A. Akerlof, David Romer, and Joseph E. Stiglitz share their thoughts on the recent Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy conference.

The crisis highlighted the role of cross-border banking linkages. This IMF working paper finds that global financial conditions and banking crises were drivers of banks’ foreign credit exposures. However, borrower countries’ foreign banking exposures were driven by how and from whom countries borrowed, together with global financial and domestic demand conditions.

This paper provides country-specific information on fiscal rules in use in 81 countries from 1985 to end-September 2012 in a user-friendly format. It includes details on design features, such as the rules’ legal basis, coverage, escape clauses, and enforcement mechanisms. Information is also available in an electronic data visualization tool.

Recent events have shown that sovereigns, just like banks, can be subject to runs. A recent IMF paper compiles a database of investor holdings of advanced economy sovereign debt and proposes risk indicators to assess sovereigns’ vulnerability to shifts in investor behavior.