We study what makes government bonds a safe asset. Building on a sample of monthly changes in government bond yields in 40 advanced and emerging countries, we analyse the sensitivity of yields to country specific fundamentals interacted with changes in global risk (VIX). We find that inertia...

We add to the literature on the influence of the global financial cycle (GFC) and gyrations in capital flows. First, we build a new measure of the GFC based on a structural factor approach, which incorporates theoretical priors in its definition. This measure can also be decomposed in a...

This paper studies current account reversals in industrial countries across different exchange rate regimes. There are two major findings which have important implications for industrial economies with external imbalances: first, triggers of current account reversals differ between exchange rate...

This paper studies export adjustment to negative shocks in currency unions. I consider the hitherto ignored role of trade costs and taxes in internal devaluations, which have been brought to the fore of international policy during the recent euro periphery crisis. Trade costs can limit the...

This paper draws a causal link between the rise of global value chain participation and the decline of exchange rate pass-through to import prices over the last decades. We first present a structural two-country model in order to illustrate how participation in global value chains can impact...

Using a novel dataset on changes in capital controls and currency-based prudential measures in 17 major emerging market economies (EMEs) over the period 2001-2011, this paper provides new evidence on domestic and multilateral (or spillover) effects of capital controls before and after the global...

The global financial crisis has led to a revival of the empirical literature on current account imbalances. This paper contributes to that literature by investigating the importance of evaluating model and parameter uncertainty prior to reaching any firm conclusion. We explore three alternative...

The influential work of Obstfeld and Rogoff argues that a closing-up of the US current account deficit involves a large exchange rate adjustment. However, the Obstfeld-Rogoff model works exclusively via demand-side channels and abstracts from possible supply-side changes. We extend the framework...

In a panel covering a large number of countries from 1970 to 2003, we show that net portfolio flows play an important role in correcting external imbalances, since they are driven by common determinants represented by countries' demographic profiles, the quality of institutions, monetary...

In this paper, we study the effects of structural shocks that influence global risk – the main factor behind a “global capital flows cycle” – and how risk, in turn, is transmitted to capital flows. Our results show that not all the risk shocks driving the global financial cycle have the...