This paper provides a broad empirical examination of the major currencies' roles in international capital markets, with a special emphasis on the first year of the Euro. A contribution is made as to how to measure these roles, both for international financing as well as for international...

The electronic trading system Xetra of the German Security Exchange provides a unique data source on the equity trades of 451 large traders located in 23 different cities and 8 European countries. We explore informational asymmetries across the trader population: Traders located outside Germany...

This Paper considers the incentives for foreign direct investment in transformation countries if actual expropriation is the possible result of a conflict between multinational firms and local or national governments. The Paper compares threats of complete expropriation and of repeated...

One of the reasons for governments to use capital controls is to obtain some degree of monetary independence. This paper investigates the link between capital controls and interest differentials/ forward premia. This to test whether they can indeed give governments the power to drive exchange...

This paper reviews the first evidence on the impact of European Monetary Union on European capital markets, one year after the launch of the single currency. Our assessment of this evidence is very favourable. On almost all counts EMU has either already drastically changed the European financial...

By combining new data on bilateral asset holdings with data on securities regulation in an empirical gravity model, it is found that bilateral differences in securities regulation lead to decreased portfolio holdings. Hence, regulatory harmonization can foster financial integration. The results...

We show that international consumption risk sharing is significantly improved by capital flows, especially portfolio investment. Concomitantly, we show that poor institutions hamper risk sharing, but to an extent that decreases with openness. In particular, risk sharing is prevalent even among...

We explore some empirical properties of gross international investment positions. In order to provide income-smoothing, net investment income should negatively covary with GDP. Moreover, to maximize stabilization of GNP in the face of GDP fluctuations, the yield on foreign assets should move...

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...

This paper studies the determinants of global liquidity using data on cross-border bank flows, with a longer time series and broader country sample than previous studies. We define global liquidity as non-price determinants of cross-border credit supply, consistent with its meaning as the...