Using recent advances in panel data estimation techniques, we find that an appreciation of the US dollar exchange rate leads to a significant decline in oil demand for a sample of 65 oil-importing countries. The estimated effect turns out to be much larger than the impact of a shift in the...

We test the hypothesis that the government bond markets in the Eurozone are more fragile and more susceptible to self-fulfilling liquidity crises than in stand-alone countries. We find evidence that a significant part of the surge in the spreads of the PIGS countries in the Eurozone during...

We develop a model predicting two channels through which creditor protection enhances the performance of stock prices: the probability of a liquidity crisis leading to a binding investment-finance constraint falls with a strong protection of creditors; the stock prices under the...

We explore whether the global financial crisis has had heterogeneous effects on traded goods differentiated by quality. Combining a dataset of Argentinean firm-level destination-specific wine exports with quality ratings, we show that higher quality exports grew faster before the crisis, but...

Although many U.S. state policies presume that human capital is important for state economic development, there is little research linking better education to state incomes. In a complement to international studies of income differences, we investigate the extent to which quality-adjusted...

In this paper we suggest that Eurozone countries face a policy trade-off among: 1) a common rule imposing co-movements in fiscal policy; 2) financial stability; and 3) financial integration. We provide empirical evidence documenting the existence of such a trade-off in the period characterized...

This paper examines the time-profile of the impact of systemic banking crises on GDP and industrial production using a panel of 24 countries over the inter-war period and compares this to the post-war experience of these countries. We show that banking crises have effects that induce medium-term...

We analyze the interaction between monetary policy in the US and the global economy, using a global vector autoregressive model with time-varying parameters and stochastic volatility (TVP-SV-GVAR). We find that a contractionary US monetary policy shock leads to a persistent fall in international...

We show that political booms, measured by the rise in governments' popularity, predict financial crises above and beyond other better-known early warning indicators, such as credit booms. This predictive power, however, only holds in emerging economies. We show that governments in emerging...