This paper analyses the impact of the timing of EU expansion on the real exchange rate between the accession countries' currencies and the euro. I ¯nd that the real exchange rate response to EU accession is smaller in the case of a postponed accession, as postponement gives the regions more...

This study examines macro-economic developments around reversals in current account deficits in 29 OECD countries over four decades and draws some inferences for the present US deficit. Estimates of a probit model indicate that the deepness of the deficit itself, absence of spare production...

We investigate the relationship between a country's domestic financial development and the (composition of its) net foreign asset position using a pooled mean group estimator and data for 51 countries during the period 1970-2007. The results show that financial development reduces a country's...

The purpose of this Research Memorandum is to assess whether concepts from psychological theory may be useful in explaining herding and crises in financial markets. The conclusion is that the theory of cognitive dissonance, which assumes that the human brain seeks and processes information in a...

We show that, complementary to trade and financial linkages, the strength of the banking sector helps explain the transmission of currency crises. Specifically, we demonstrate that the Mexican, Thai, and Russian crises predominantly spread to countries with weaknesses in their banking sectors....

d above may also more fully apply to the Thai case, since the experience of the other countries in the region is probably tainted by contagion effects of the Thai baht crisis (Baig and Goldfajn 1999).

This paper studies the impact of explicit deposit insurance on market discipline in a framework that resembles a natural experiment. We improve upon previous studies by exploiting a unique combination of country-specific circumstances, design features, and data availability that allows us to...

In this report we examine time-varying correlations of asset returns using the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) models, recently proposed by Engle (2002), that are estimated by a two-step procedure. First, we conclude that correlations vary considerably over time. Secondly, the conditional...

One popular view on the current strength of the US dollar is that the higher growth in the US compared to Europe has stimulated foreigners to buy American assets, thereby driving up the exchange rate. In this paper a modified portfolio balance model is presented, in which it is shown that the...