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November 2018

Zooming out for better clarity: sovereign asset and liability management

M. Coskun Cangoz's picture

The balance sheet of sovereign entities is far more complex than the balance sheet of private companies. For example, the institutions that manage the assets of a sovereign are different than those which oversee the liabilities, often with different mandates. Other issues include the definition of the “sovereign” and the scope of its balance sheet, the complex valuation of tangible assets and recognition of financial instruments, negative net worth, incomplete recording, and many others. As a result, unlike private companies, most governments manage their balance sheets as separate sub-portfolios without having a holistic approach.

Borrowing for a rainy day: emergency loans in Bangladesh

Gregory Lane's picture

Blog post by a student on the job market.

Weather shocks are a constant and growing threat to much of the world’s rural population whose livelihoods depend on agriculture (Dercon, 2002). The cost of being exposed to these shocks is high: households sell productive assets or reduce spending on essential goods and services that can have substantial negative long-run consequences on household wellbeing. Moreover, households often adopt agricultural production processes that are less risky but also less productive in order to limit their exposure to these types of shocks (Janzen and Carter, 2018). Unfortunately, it has proved challenging to develop financial tools that reduce exposure this risk. Traditional insurance is often absent in developing countries because of moral hazard and adverse selection. Furthermore, weather-index insurance, which was designed to help farmers increase their resilience to extreme weather events, has suffered from low demand (Cole and Xiong, 2017).

Who’s afraid of big bad firms?

Asli Demirgüç-Kunt's picture

Superstar firms have been in the minds of world’s leading bankers and economists lately. Policymakers are concerned that America’s leading firms such as the FAANG stocks — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google — are having adverse results on the rest of us and making economic policy less predictable. Why is this? Many of the companies have improved the lives of people across the world with highly desirable and useful products. These superstar firms have also done very well for many of their stakeholders and investors. The numbers are staggering. These five tech companies together account for roughly half of the gains achieved by the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index in 2018. And in recent weeks, Apple became the world's first trillion-dollar corporation, with Amazon not far behind. While the superstar firms have made life easier for many consumers, it's hard for economists not to wonder whether the effects of their stratospheric success are entirely benign.