Interest-rate spreads fluctuate widely across time and countries. We characterize their behavior using some 3,200 quarterly observations for 21 advanced and 17 emerging economies since the early 1990s. Before the financial crisis, spreads are 10 times more volatile in emerging economies than in...

The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 spread through different channels from its origin in the United States to large parts of the world. In this paper we explore the financial and the trade channel in a unified framework and quantify their relative importance for this transmission....

We analyse how movements in the components of sovereign bond yields in the United States affect long-term rates in 10 advanced and 21 emerging economies. The paper documents significant global spillovers from both the expectations and term premia components of longterm rates in the United...

Using data for a large number of advanced and emerging market economies during 1982-2009, this paper examines the distinct impact of financial integration and globalization on several dimensions of real activity. We find that: (a) financial integration has progressed significantly worldwide,...

The aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the impact of international financial integration on the long-run Real Exchange Rate (RER) in 39 developing countries belonging to three different geographical regions (Latin America, Asia and MENA). It covers the period 1979-2004,...

The aim of this paper is to provide some new empirical evidence on the determinants of volatility of real exchange rates in emerging countries, focusing on the role of international financial integration in particular. A reduced-form model is estimated using the GMM method for dynamic panels...

This paper models a multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) as a coordination device. Multinational enterprises can invest in any number of countries. Without a multilateral investment agreement, expropriation triggers an investment stop by the single MNE. Under a multilateral agreement,...