Great attention is now being paid to global imbalances, the growing U.S. current account deficit financed by growing surpluses in the rest of the world. How can the issue be understood in a more historical perspective? We seek a meaningful comparison between the two eras of globalization:...

We study economic growth and inflation at different levels of government and external debt. Our analysis is based on new data on forty-four countries spanning about two hundred years. The dataset incorporates over 3,700 annual observations covering a wide range of political systems,...

This Paper uses empirical proxies for the domestic development and international integration of debt and equity markets to assess the role of financial development in international consumption smoothing. First, we find that both domestic and international finance contribute to international...

How much risk sharing takes place between regions within countries, between countries internationally, and what are the lessons for EMU? We study these questions based on regional data from the US, Canada, the UK and Italy, and national data from an international sample of 23 OECD countries,...

The Paper develops a model of foreign direct investments (FDI) and foreign portfolio investments. FDI is characterized by hands-on management style that enables the owner to obtain relatively refined information about the productivity of the firm. This superiority, relative to portfolio...

This Paper looks at the effect of domestic and external financial liberalization. Using a sample of 27 developing and developed countries, it studies the exchange market pressure and output gap effects of liberalization. The results show that developing and developed countries differ in many...

This Paper analyses the effects of pegged and floating exchange rates using a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model that is calibrated to the US and a European aggregate. The model assumes shocks to money, productivity and the interest parity condition. It captures the fact that the...

This Paper analyses the welfare effects of monetary policy rules in a quantitative business cycle model of a two-country world. The model features staggered price setting, and shocks to productivity and to the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) condition. UIP shocks have a sizable negative...

This Paper computes welfare maximizing Taylor-style interest rate rules, in a business cycle model of a small open economy. The model assumes staggered price setting and shocks to domestic productivity, to the world interest rate, to world inflation and to the uncovered interest rate parity...

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...