This paper documents a set of new stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility for emerging market firms following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate financial roots provide a...

The post-Global Financial Crisis period shows a surge in corporate leverage in emerging markets and a number of countries with deteriorated corporate financial fragility indicators (Altman's Z-score). Firm size plays a critical role in the relationship between leverage, firm fragility and...

Over the last two decades, the unprecedented increase in non-bank financial intermediation, particularly open-end mutual funds and ETFs, accounts for nearly half of the external financing flows to emerging markets exceeding cross-border lending by global banks. Evidence suggests that investment...

This paper examines the recent upsurge in foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms, specifically focusing on acquisitions made by firms located in emerging markets. Neoclassical theory predicts that, on net, capital should flow from countries that are capital-abundant to countries that are...

The effects of macroprudential policy on portfolio flows vary considerably across the global financial cycle. A tighter ex-ante macroprudential stance amplifies the impact of global risk shocks on bond and equity flows, increasing outflows significantly more during risk-off episodes and...

When "confidence" is lost, "liquidity dries up." We investigate the meaning of "confidence" and "liquidity" in the context of the current financial crisis. The financial crisis is a manifestation of an age-old problem with private money creation, banking panics. We explain this and provide some...

The Panic of 2007-2008 was a run on the sale and repurchase market (the "repo" market), which is a very large, short-term market that provides financing for a wide range of securitization activities and financial institutions. Repo transactions are collateralized, frequently with securitized...

The Financial Crisis began and accelerated in short-term money markets. One such market is the multi-trillion dollar sale-and-repurchase ("repo") market, where prices show strong reactions during the crisis. The academic literature and policy community remain unsettled about the role of repo...

Why did the failure of Lehman Brothers make the financial crisis dramatically worse? The financial crisis was a process of a build-up of risk during the crisis prior to the Lehman failure. Market participants tried to preserve an option or exit by shortening maturities - the "flight from...

Paths into the Asian Crisis of 1997-98 and the recent global financial crisis were similar, but the roads out could not be more different. Common wisdom has it that on impact Asia endured fiscal austerity imposed by the IMF whereas the IMF recommended stimulus in the case of the advanced nations...