We provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production. To the best of our knowledge, this well-established and important theoretical proposition has not been tested before. Our empirical procedure is summarized as follows. First, we construct a measure of...

Does financial development result in capital being reallocated more rapidly to industries where it is most productive? We argue that if this was the case, financially developed countries should see faster growth in industries with investment opportunities due to global demand and productivity...

We propose a dynamic APT multi-factor model with time-varying volatility for currency, bond and stock returns for ten European countries over the period 1977-1997. We exploit the cross-sectional dimension of the model to construct world portfolios, which, when added to the original list of...

In this paper, we propose to identify the dependence structure existing between the returns of equity and commodity futures and its evolution through the past 20 years. The key point is that we do not do not impose the dependence structure but let the data select it. To do so, we model the...

We characterize asset return linkages during periods of stress by an extremal dependence measure. Contrary to correlation analysis, this non-parametric measure is not predisposed towards the normal distribution and can account for non-linear relationships. Our estimates for the G-5 countries...

This Paper examines pitfalls of a state-dominated financial system in the context of China. These include possible segmentation of the internal capital market due to local government interference and misallocation of capital. First, we employ two standard tools from the international finance...

Macroeconomic models of equity returns perform poorly. The proportion of daily index returns that these models explain is essentially zero. Instead of relying on macroeconomic determinants, our model includes a concept from microstructure order flow. Order flow is the proximate determinant of...

This Paper develops a test of contagion in financial markets based on bivariate correlation analysis, which generalizes existing tests, and applies it to the international effects of the Hong Kong stock market crisis of October 1997. Contagion is defined as a structural break in the...

This Paper analyses the issues raised by EMU for the relationships between the Euro area and the international financial system. The depreciation of the Euro exchange rate since the beginning of EMU has attracted most attention. The Paper argues that theory and the data support none of the...

International industry data permits testing whether the industry-specific impact of cross-country differences in institutions or policies is consistent with economic theory. Empirical implementation requires specifying the industry characteristics that determine impact strength. Most of the...