This paper empirically investigates international equity investors' foreign portfolios before and during the financial crisis by estimating a gravity model for 22 source and 42 destination countries. The results show that international stock market diversification provides large gains during the...

This paper tests for the transmission of the 2007-2010 financial and sovereign debt crises to fifteen EMU countries. We use daily data from 2003 to 2010 on country financial and non-financial stock market indexes. First, we find strong evidence of crisis transmission to European non-financials...

To what extent was the credit contraction during the global financial crisis due to more intense screening and monitoring by banks? We address this question by analyzing changes in the structure of a large number of syndicated loans to private, non-financial corporations. We find an increase in...

This paper analyzes mean reversion in international stock markets during the period 1900-2008, using annual data. Our panel of stock indexes in seventeen developed countries, covering a time span of more than a century, allows us to analyze in detail the dynamics of the mean-reversion process....

This paper examines the predictive power of weather for electricity prices in day ahead markets in real time. We find that next-day weather forecasts improve the forecast accuracy of Scandinavian day-ahead electricity prices substantially in terms of point forecasts, suggesting that weather...

We explore the role of financial openness – capital account openness and gross capital inflows – and a newly constructed gravity-based contagion index to assess the importance of these factors in the run-up to currency crises. Using a quarterly data set of 46 advanced and emerging market...

This paper examines the extent to which large swings of sovereign yields in euro area countries during the sovereign debt crisis can be attributed to fundamentals. We focus on the inherent uncertainty in bond yield models, which is often overlooked in the literature. We show that the outcomes...

We study the impact of forward guidance used as an unconventional monetary policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on real and breakeven US Treasury yield curves. We find that explicit FOMC policy rate guidance announcements led to a significant reduction in real yields. By...

Quantitative easing (QE) aims to lower long term interest rates and stimulate economic growth via the portfolio rebalancing channel. One of the assumptions for QE to work is that there are investors with strong preferences to hold long term bonds, i.e. so called preferred habitat investors. This...

We analyze how global and local factors affect portfolio allocation by euro area investors in emerging markets at the bond-level. First, cross-sectional analysis reveals a strong preference for home (Euro) currency bonds. Second, panel regressions, whether at the bond or aggregate flows level,...