We document the existence of excess returns to naïve currency trading strategies during the emergence of the modern foreign exchange market in the 1920s and 1930s. This era of active currency speculation constitutes a natural out-of-sample test of the performance of carry, momentum and value...

The recent global financial crisis has caused massive upheavals worldwide. The papers in this volume analyze whether financial principles seem to have shifted in recent years, and what that may mean for international financial markets and regulation. What ¡°broke¡± in the current crisis? Is...

Most of the currency literature investigates the risk and return characteristics of the currency carry trade after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. In order to gauge the long-term currency carry premium, we extend the sample to 20 currencies over the period 1900 to 2012. We find modest...

This study undertakes a unique comparison into the relative efficacy of four well established liquidity measures, namely turnover, proportion of daily zero returns, Amihud (2002) and Liu (2006), in explaining the bid-ask spread plus brokerage costs when powerful and common firm governance...

While gold objects have existed for thousands of years, gold's role in diversified portfolios is not well understood. We critically examine popular stories such as 'gold is an inflation hedge'. We show that gold may be an effective hedge if the investment horizon is measured in centuries. Over...

We attempt to identify and explain the broad patterns of financial development in developed countries over the twentieth century. We find that, contrary to the predictions of most existing theories, indicators of financial development do not seem monotonic over time. In particular, we find that...

Using a new dataset on capital account openness, we investigate why equity return correlations changed over the last century. Based on a new, long-run dataset on capital account regulations in a group of 16 countries over the period 1890-2001, we show that correlations increase as financial...

Drawing on a newly-collected data set on bond yields, macroeconomic variables, and news of various categories for a panel of emerging markets, we provide the first comparative analysis of the determinants of sovereign bond spreads in the first era of financial globalization and bond finance...

We examine the evidence of contagion during the pre World War I era and the interwar and contrast our findings with the evidence of contagion from the recent crises in Asia and Latin America. Using weekly data on bond prices and interest rates, we investigate the extent to which bilateral...

Theoretical models have suggested that sanctions may be important for enforcing sovereign debt contracts (Bulow and Rogoff, 1989a, 1989b). This paper examines the role of sanctions in promoting debt repayment during the classical gold standard period. We analyze a wide range of sanctions...