To understand the growth effects of currency undervaluation we estimate its impact on the different components of GDP. We find that, for developing countries, undervaluation does not affect the tradable sector, but does lead to greater domestic savings and investment, as well as employment.

The spreading of the 2007–09 global financial crisis has highlighted the need to increase the resilience of the financial sector to contagion shocks. Debt financed by foreign banks has been found to increase the financial fragility of the borrowing country in situations of financial contagion,...

Consistent with recent theoretical models, this paper finds that financial openness has a positive effect on private credit in economies characterized by a competitive banking sector, but that this effect vanishes and even becomes negative in economies with imperfect banking competition.

This paper investigates how business cycle volatility affects internal and external funding sources of banks. It argues that excessive credit growth, credit cycles, and bank failures are phenomena related to distinct patterns of banks’ financing options over the cycle.

We provide evidence that institutional improvements lead to lower levels of financial dollarization through previously unidentified channels. These indirect channels operate in addition to the direct impact identified in the literature and further illustrate the importance of institutions for...

Estimating a theoretical gravity model over a sixty-year period, from 1948 to 2009, I found an unexpected trend: the currency union impact on trade is decreasing over time. This result suggests that with trade and financial globalization, currency unions become less and less important for...

This paper assesses duration-specific treatment effects of fixed currency regimes on bilateral trade along a duration path of up to 25 years. We find that country-pairs with fixed exchange rate regimes trade more, but only after about 8 years.

We construct a model of exchange rate target zones that allows the stochastic process, with a closed-form general solution, to include the possibility of lagged response of fundamentals.

This paper argues that fixed exchange rate regimes are preferred by the international sector only if they are adopted in economies endowed with anti-inflationary policy-making institutions (i.e., independent central banks). Cross-national firm-level data gives strong support to this claim.

After every major financial crisis, the question about the responsibility of the rating agencies resurfaces. Regarding government bonds, the most frequently voiced concern targeted “unreasonably” bad ratings that might trigger capital flights and increasing risk premia which sanction further...