Similar to Chile in the 1990s, Slovenia has introduced an unremunerated reserve requirement (URR) on financial credits in 1995. We find that the URR has not been effective in reducing overall inflows of foreign capital. Hence, the gain in monetary autonomy has been limited. While the overall...

Mercosur countries have witnessed a boom of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows since the early 1990s. However, regional integration, viewed in isolation, was not sufficient for the subregion to regain its attractiveness to FDI. FDI growth in individual Mercosur countries was closely related...

In the current era of strong worldwide market couplings the global financial village became highly prone to systemic collapses, events that can rapidly sweep through out the entire village. Here we present a new methodology to assess and quantify inter-market relations. The approach is based on...

This paper employs an Extreme Value Theory framework to investigate the existence of contagion between European and US banks. The fact that many regulators have no detailed data sets about interbank cross-exposures raises the necessity of finding market-based indicators in order to analyze the...

The globalization of international financial markets has renewed interest in the measurement of capital mobility. Consumption-based tests such as the Euler equation test are commonly used. These tests, however, are derived under restrictive assumptions on consumer behavior. In this paper, we ask...

Stylized facts suggest that output volatility in OECD countries has declined in recent years. However, the causes and the nature of this decline have so far been analyzed mainly for the United States. In this paper, we analyze whether structural breaks in the dynamics and the volatility of the...

International activities of commercial banks are a potential source for the transmission of shocks across countries. In Europe, bank finance plays a relatively important role, and efforts have been made at creating a level playing field for financial institutions. This paper reviews the stylized...

This paper examines the influence of political risk guarantees of bilateral investment treaties on debt and equity flows using panel data on middle income countries for the period 1984-2011. Adopting system GMM methodology, the paper empirically finds that ratified bilateral investment treaties...

Developing countries are constrained in financing current account deficits as real capital mobility is still far from perfect. At the same time, capital flows to these countries proved to be extremely volatile. The paper argues that the long-term problem of "too little" should not be confused...

We analyze foreigners’ and domestic institutional investors’ positions in U.S. equities. Controlling for many factors, we uncover a common preference for large firms and firms that are diversified internationally. The domestic preference for internationally diversified firms implies that...