Covid-19 has affected the global economy, influencing firm and household financial decisions worldwide. The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) released an AED 256 billion stimulus package to provide banks with sufficient capital to support economic activities and development by providing temporary relief to large corporations, small-and medium-sized enterprises, and households. New financial products have rapidly appeared, including relief packages for rent, mortgages, personal loans, credit cards, SMEs, and corporate entities. Regression analysis explores the effect of such relief packages on UAE firm and household finances. Using online survey data gathered via convenience sampling of UAE households, econometric analysis confirms that select demographic factors and financial instruments positively relate to effective financial decision-making. Our results guide policymakers on which relief packages effectively manage firm-level and household financial distress during a health pandemic.

This paper analyzes the post-crisis slump in 30 European economies during the 2008Q1–2014Q4 period using the business cycle accounting (BCA) method à la [Chari, V. V., P. Kehoe, and E. McGrattan. 2007. “Business Cycle Accounting.”Econometrica75 (3): 781–836]. We find that the deterioration in the efficiency wedge is the most important driver of the European Great Recession and that this adverse shock persists throughout our sample. Moreover, we find that countries with higher growth in nonperforming loans feature a smaller decline in efficiency wedges. These findings support the emerging literature on resource misallocation triggered by financial crises.

In this paper, we investigate the contribution of behavioural characteristics to the financial literacy of UAE residents after controlling for demographic factors. Specifically, we test the relationship between financial literacy and behavioural biases such as representativeness, self-serving, overconfidence, loss aversion, and hindsight bias. Using data collected through survey questionnaires, we apply the methodology developed by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to compute financial literacy scores. Our overall results show that all behavioural biases except for overconfidence bias are positively related to financial literacy. Furthermore, some biases exhibit a stronger quantitative relationship with financial literacy than others. For example, hindsight bias displays the strongest link to financial literacy, followed by self-serving bias. The weakest but still statistically significant effect is loss aversion bias. Although biases, in general, have negative connotations, behavioural biases appear to be related to higher levels of financial literacy.

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An increasing number of emerging and developing countries have adopted or are transitioning towards full-fledged inflation targeting (FFIT) as the main monetary policy framework to anchor inflation. In this paper, we explore the FFIT regime as a means for Mauritius to achieve stable inflation, anchor inflationary expectations and establish credibility in committing monetary policy towards price stability as its primary goal. This paper reviews and highlights issues experienced with the current monetary policy framework and the challenges in transitioning towards FFIT. Given that forecasting is central to FFIT, we develop a practical model-based forecasting and policy analysis system (FPAS) to support transition to FFIT, taking into account structural features and shocks that are specific to the Mauritius economy.