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Capital flows data from Balance of Payments statistics often lag 3-6 months, which renders timely surveillance and policy deliberation difficult. To address the tension, we propose two coincident composite indicators for capital flows that improve upon existing proxies. We find that the most widely used proxy, the capital tracker, often overpredicts net flows by 30 percent. We augment the tracker into a composite indicator by assigning to it a lesser but optimally estimated weight while incorporating other regional and global coincident correlates of capital flows. The proposed composite indicator of net flows outperforms the capital tracker in its original format. To complement the indicator with an even timelier variant, we also utilize the EPFR high frequency coverage of gross bond and equity flows as an indicator on foreign investors' sentiment.

Sovereign spreads, Market price of risk, Euro area, Contagion, E43, E44, G01, G10,

Global attention to ending child marriage and its socio-economic consequences is gaining momentum. Ending child marriage is not only critical from a development perspective but it also has important economic implications. This paper is the first to quantify the relationship between child marriage and economic growth. Applying a simultaneous equations model, the analysis shows that eliminating child marriage would significantly improve economic growth—if child marriage were ended today, long-term annual per capita real GDP growth in emerging and developing countries would increase by 1.05 percentage points. The results also provide insights on policy prioritization in developing comprehensive strategies to end child marriage. For example, the strong interdependent relationship between education and child marriage suggests that education policies and the budgets that support them should place greater emphasis on reducing child marriage.