In case of speculative attacks, the central banks' decisions to intervene or not to intervene seem to play an important role for the economic costs of currency crises. The central bank can either abstain from intervening or start an intervention, which in turn can be successful or unsuccessful....

Standard banking theory suggests that there exists an optimal level of credit risk that yields maximum bank profit. We identify the optimal level of risk-weighted assets that maximizes banks’ returns in the full sample of US banks over the period 1996–2011. We find that this optimal level is...

Transport sector accounts for about 8% of total energy consumption in China and this share will likely increase in the visible future. Improving energy efficiency has been considered as a major way for reducing transport energy use, whereas its effectiveness might be affected by the rebound...

Practitioners are generally well aware of the fact that most standard approaches for estimation and inference in panel data regressions are based on assuming that the cross-sectional units are independent of each other, an assumption that is surely mistaken in applications, especially in...

We introduce a dynamic banking-macro model, which abstains from conventional mean-reversion assumptions and in which—similar to Brunnermeier and Sannikov (2010)—adverse asset-price movements and their impact on risk premia and credit spreads can induce instabilities in the banking sector. To...

This paper studies the optimal asset allocation problem of an investor with a portfolio given by the U.S. risk-free asset and a carry trade benchmark comprising the currencies of the G10 countries. Our optimal strategy is able to adapt to macroeconomic conditions and avoid the so-called crash...

While currency crises are typically considered to be painful and costly events, a closer look reveals that economic developments after a speculative attack differ considerably. Monetary authorities can play a central role in determining the economic course and costs of currency crises. They have...

The Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policy announcements in 2008–2009 substantially reduced international long-term bond yields and the spot value of the dollar. These changes closely followed announcements and were very unlikely to have occurred by chance. A simple portfolio...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

This paper provides an empirical exploration of the interaction between fiscal policy, monetary policy, exchange rates, and external balances as well as their impacts on real economic growth and inflation for the BRICS countries. A panel VAR model is employed to assess the dynamic relationships....