Solow residuals are used as proxies for productivity shocks in many empirical studies.Considering the shortcomings of this approach this paper proposes the common trends approach as an alternative.The common trends econometric technique is utilized here in an attempt to identify and analyze the...

South Africa's 40 years of experience with capital controls on residents and non-residents (1961-2001) reads like a collection of examples of perverse unanticipated effects of legislation and regulation.We show that the presence of capital controls on residents and non-residents, enabled the...

This paper focuses on the fundamental determinants of the degree of financial integration in the European Union over the period 1973-1993. Using closed interest differentials to measure the intensity of capital controls and applying a panel data approach, we find realized inflation rates,...

The aim of this paper is to construct theoretical models which help to shed light on the recent criticisms of volatile investment flows. We do not make any empirical attempt to establish the existence or gauge the importance of the adverse effects of volatile investment flows nor do we make any...

Abstract: The European sovereign debt crisis is characterized by the simultaneous surge in borrowing costs in the GIPS countries after 2008. We present a theory, which can account for the behavior of sovereign bond spreads in Southern Europe between 1998 and 2012. Our key theoretical argument is...

This paper studies how the exposure of a country's corporate sector to interest rate and exchange rate changes affects the probability of a currency crisis.To analyze this question, we present a model that defines currency crisis as situations in which the costs of maintaining a fixed exchange...

We model the choice of loan currency in a framework which features a trade-off between lower cost of debt and the risk of firm-level distress costs. Under perfect information foreign currency funds come at a lower interest rate, all foreign currency earners as well as those local currency...

We study the economic role of banks’ soft information, which evolved from repeated lending relationships, in the context of loan default. Using a proprietary database from one of the largest state-owned commercial banks in China, we find that the bank’s internal credit rating scores play a...

Motivated by current concerns over foreign currency exposures in emerging economies, we examine the currency denomination of business loans made in Bulgaria prior to the current crisis. We analyze information on the requested and granted currency for more than hundred thousand loans granted by...

We examine how relational contracting in credit and investment relationships is affected by the potential expropriation of funds. We implement credit relationships in which repayment is not third-party enforceable, i.e. borrowers can default on their loans. In our main treatment the borrower can...