In light of the U.S. current account deficit, pressure is high on Asian countries to revalue their currencies. The calls from some U.S. policymakers for tariffs on imports from China has sparked fears that this could trigger a world-wide surge in protectionism. This study evaluates the risk of...

This paper compares the performance of simple inflation targeting (IT) and price-level path targeting (PLPT) rules to stabilize the macroeconomy, in response to a series of shocks, similar to those seen in Canada and the United States over the 1983 to 2004 period. The analysis is conducted in a...

We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of different economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a realtime subjective measure of uncertainty...

Do short sales restrictions have an impact on security prices? We address this question in the context of a natural experiment surrounding the short sale ban of 2008 using a comprehensive sample of Canadian stocks cross-listed in the U.S. Among financial stocks, which were singled out by the ban...

We present a self-consistent model for explosive financial bubbles, which combines a mean-reverting volatility process and a stochastic conditional return which reflects nonlinear positive feedbacks and continuous updates of the investors' beliefs and sentiments. The conditional expected returns...

Regulators charged with monitoring systemic risk need to focus on sentiment as well as narrowly defined measures of systemic risk. This chapter describes techniques for jointly monitoring the co-evolution of sentiment and systemic risk. To measure systemic risk, we use Marginal Expected...

The aim of this study is to examine whether securitized real estate returns reflect direct real estate returns or general stock market returns using international data for the U.S., U.K., and Australia. In contrast to previous research, which has generally relied on overall real estate market...

I study rollover risk in the wholesale funding market when intermediaries can hold liquidity ex ante and are subject to fire sales ex post. Precautionary liquidity restores multiple equilibria in a global rollover game. An intermediate liquidity level supports both the usual run equilibrium and...

U.S. banks have increasingly diversified into activities traditionally considered as non-core for the banking sector. This paper investigates whether diversification influences banks' investment (credit) policy and profitability. Diversified banks appear to benefit from “coinsurance,” supply...