Real-rate carry

Coverage: 58 of 168 countries we score. 80 publish no policy rate at all (mostly currency-union members that share a central bank), 29 have one older than 60 days, and 1 have no year-over-year inflation reading to deflate it with. A frozen rate differenced against a live CPI print publishes a move nobody made, so those are out rather than filled in. The volatility adjustment covers 50 of the 58; the rest price against the IMF's monthly FX backstop, which cannot carry a volatility estimate, and show "—" rather than a made-up zero.

What this is, and is not: an ex-post real rate — today's nominal policy rate deflated by the most recent published inflation print, which on this table is between 45 and 319 days old (median 76). It is not an ex-ante real rate: we hold no inflation expectations for this panel. The carry/vol column divides by an annualised standard deviation of our own 30-day FX return series — a backward-looking estimate on overlapping windows, not a market-implied vol, and it says nothing about a managed or pegged currency's risk of a step move. Not investment advice.