Conventional wisdom in banking argues that diversification tends to reduce bank risk and improve performance, but the recent financial crisis suggests that aggressive diversification strategies may have resulted in increased risk taking and poor performance. This paper addresses this important...

We empirically test the dependence of the Russian stock market on the world stock market and world oil prices in the period 1997:10-2012:02. We also consider three Eastern European stock markets (Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary), as well as two markets outside Europe (Turkey and South...

This paper provides an overview of the Chinese banking sector, which has expanded tremendously over the past two decades. We first describe aggregate developments of the sector and compare them to the situation in other countries. Also, various financial institutions that operate in China are...

We assess the correlation of supply and demand shocks between current countries in the euro area and EU accession candidates from 1993/1995 to 2002.Supply and demand shocks are recovered from estimated structural VAR models of output growth and inflation. Notably, the economic slowdown between...

We collect data from 29 separate papers estimating the equilibrium level and possible undervaluation of the Chinese currency, the renminbi. These papers yield a total of 97 individual observations on misalignment, which we analyse with the help of meta-analysis. We find that the vast majority of...

We assess the effects of oil price shocks on real exchange rate and output in four large energy-producing countries: Iran, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, and Russia. We estimate four-variable structural vector autoregressive models using standard long-run restrictions. Not surprisingly, we find that...

In this paper we assess the impact of oil price shocks on oil-producer and oil-consumer economies. VAR models for different countries are linked together via a trade matrix, as in Abeysinghe (2001). As expected, we find that oil producers (Russia and Canada here) benefit from oil price shocks....

We assess the extent and speed of exchange rate pass-through in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). We do this in the framework of vector autoregressive regressions, utilising impulse functions and variance decompositions with monthly data that starts in 1999 in order...

Estimating money demand functions for Russia following the 1998 crisis, we find a stable money demand relationship when augmented by a deterministic trend signifying falling velocity. As predicted by theory, higher income boosts demand for real rouble balances and the income elasticity of money...

We summarize previous research on China's business cycle correlation with other countries with the help of meta-analysis techniques. We survey 71 related papers along with all the characteristics of the estimations as well as those of the authors. We confirm that especially Pacific Rim countries...