This paper argues that the lack of timely and decisive policy action to correct domestic and external imbalances contributed crucially to the build-up of financial excesses that led to the financial crisis and the Great Recession. We focus on 2002-07 and perform a number of counterfactual...

Il lavoro analizza le dinamiche di investimento dei fondi sovrani per paese e per settore nell'arco dell'ultimo ventennio. Il patrimonio gestito dai fondi sovrani è passato da 500 miliardi di dollari nel 1995 a 4,7 trilioni a fine 2011. Sulla base di un dataset specificamente creato, relativo a...

The analysis of international investment position and balance of payments statistics suggests that foreign assets held abroad are greatly underestimated. This paper has three main goals. First, it examines the role played by tax havens in tax evasion. Second, it estimates unreported capital to...

This work examines how much of the variation in emerging market economies' (EMEs) spreads can be ascribed to 'country-specific' factors rather than to 'common' factors, once the existence of an interaction between the state of macroeconomic fundamentals and global financial conditions is...

Financial integration of emerging economies is on the rise and so are financial and monetary spillovers, especially those originating from US economic policy decisions and the (related) evolution of the US dollar. We revisit the “trilemma” vs. “dilemma” hypothesis and assess whether, and...

This paper contributes to the literature on Multilateral Development Banks' (MDBs) balance sheet optimization in two ways. First, it looks at solutions to alleviate the ‘trilemma' faced by MDBs – stemming from G20 shareholders' calls for increasing development lending while, simultaneously,...

Italian Abstract: Il lavoro effettua una verifica della capacità dell'oro di costituire un'attività rifugio (safe haven asset) nelle fasi di forte tensione sui mercati finanziari. Sotto questo aspetto, l'oro viene confrontato con altri potenziali safe haven assets (titoli sovrani tedeschi e...

We exploit a gravity model to study the main determinants of cross-border financial flows and to identify those flows that appear to be abnormally above the predicted value. Our data include all Italian cross-border bank transfers that took place between 2007 and 2010. We find that, other things...

We compare different approaches to constructing financial condition indices (FCIs) for major emerging market economies (EMEs). We further test whether measures of web-search intensity for keywords related to financial tensions can complement the information content of traditional financial...