The Research Summaries in the December 2012 IMF Research Bulletin look at "Market Failures and Macroprudential Policy" (Giovanni Favara and Lev Ratnovski) and "Measurement Matters for House Price Indices" (Mick Silver). The Q&A column looks at "Seven Questions on Turning Points of the Global Business Cycle." The Bulletin also includes a listing of recent IMF Working Papers and Staff Discussion Notes, as well as a list of the top-viewed articles for the first three issues of IMF Economic Review in 2012. Information is also included on a call for papers for the conference "Asia: Challenges of Stability and Growth" to be held in Seoul in 2013.

The April 2012 Global Financial Stability Report assesses changes in risks to financial stability over the past six months, focusing on sovereign vulnerabilities, risks stemming from private sector deleveraging, and assessing the continued resilience of emerging markets. The report probes the implications of recent reforms in the financial system for market perception of safe assets, and investigates the growing public and private costs of increased longevity risk from aging populations.

The research summaries in the June 2012 issue of the IMF Research Bulletin are "Public Debt in Advanced Economies and Its Spillover Effects on Long-Term Yields" (by C. Emre Alper and Lorenzo Forni) and "Expansionary Fiscal Contractions: The Empirical Evidence" (by Rina Bhattacharya and Sanchita Mukherjee). The Q&A covers "Seven Questions about Income Inequality" (by Laura Feiveson). Also included in this issue are details on visiting scholars at the IMF, a listing of recently published IMF Working Papers and Staff Discussion Notes, as well as information on IMF Economic Review.

The research summaries in the September 2012 issue of the IMF Research Bulletin are "Surges in Capital Flows: Why History Repeats Itself" (by Mahvash S. Qureshi) and "The LIC-BRIC Linkage: Growth Spillovers" (by Issouf Samake, Yongzheng Yang, and Catherine Pattillo). The Q&A covers "Seven Questions on Monetary Transmission in Low-Income Countries" (by Prachi Mishra and Peter Montiel). "Conversations with a Visiting Scholar" features an interview with IMF Fellow Olivier Coibion. Also included in this issue are details on the IMF Fellowship Program, visiting scholars at the IMF, a listing of recently published IMF Working Papers and Staff Discussion Notes, and an announcement on IMF Economic Review's first Impact Factor.

The IMF's 2012 Annual Report chronicles the response of the Fund's Executive Board and staff to the global financial crisis and other events during financial year 2012, which covers the period from May 1, 2011, through April 30, 2012. The print version of the Report is available in eight languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish), along with a CD-ROM (available in English only) that includes the Report text and ancillary materials, including the Fund's Financial Statements for FY2012.

The research summaries in the March 2012 issue of the IMF Research Bulletin are "Foreign Direct Investment and the Crisis: Is This Time Different?" (by Yuko Kinoshita) and "Food Prices and Inflation" (by James P. Walsh). The Q&A covers seven questions on "Unemployment through the Prism of the Great Recession" (by Prakash Loungani). This issue also launches a new feature "Conversations with Visiting Scholars" with an interview with Tom Sargent, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Also included in this issue are details on visiting scholars at the IMF, a listing of recently published IMF Working Papers, and information on the next issue of "IMF Economic Review."

This paper reexamines the relationship between trade integration and business cycle synchronization (BCS) using new value-added trade data for 63 advanced and emerging economies during 1995–2012. In a panel framework, we identify a strong positive impact of trade intensity on BCS—conditional on various controls, global common shocks and country-pair heterogeneity—that is absent when gross trade data are used. That effect is bigger in crisis times, pointing to trade as an important crisis propagation mechanism. Bilateral intra-industry trade and trade specialization correlation also appear to increase co-movement, indicating that not only the intensity but also the type of trade matters. Finally, we show that dependence on Chinese final demand in value-added terms amplifies the international spillovers and synchronizing impact of growth shocks in China.

Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.

Two striking facts about international capital flows in emerging economies motivate this paper: (1) Governments hold large amounts of international reserves, for which they obtain a return lower than their borrowing cost. (2) Purchases of domestic assets by nonresidents and purchases of foreign assets by residents are both procyclical and collapse during crises. We propose a dynamic model of endogenous default that can account for these facts. The government faces a trade-off between the benefits of keeping reserves as a buffer against rollover risk and the cost of having larger gross debt positions. Long-duration bonds, the countercyclical default premium, and sudden stops are important for the quantitative success of the model.