Using a database of 440 international political crises over the period 1918-2002, we find that international crises reduce world market stock returns by approximately four percent per annum. Crises cause large negative stock market reactions in their first month, lower than average returns...

This study assesses the role of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s in the emergence and persistence of the large current account surpluses across non-China emerging Asia, which have been a significant counterpart to the U.S. current account deficit. Using panel data encompassing nearly...

We analyze the effects that real-time domestic and foreign news about fundamentals have on the co-movement between stock returns of a small, open economy, Portugal, and a large economy, the United States. Studying co-movement between the US and a small, open economy helps overcome significant...

Existing studies using low-frequency data have found that macroeconomic shocks contribute little to international stock market covariation. However, these papers have not accounted for the presence of asymmetric information where sophisticated investors generate private information about the...

Using a unique high-frequency futures dataset, we characterize the response of U.S., German and British stock, bond and foreign exchange markets to real-time U.S. macroeconomic news. We find that news produces conditional mean jumps; hence high-frequency stock, bond and exchange rate dynamics...

This paper examines the current thinking on exchange-rate pass-through to both import prices and consumer prices and estimates the extent to which they have fallen in the G-7 countries since the late 1970s and 1980s. For import-price pass-through we find that all countries experience a numerical...

We investigate the impact of two types of financial liberalizations on short- and long-horizon capital flows to emerging markets in a framework that controls for push and pull factors. The first type of liberalization, a reduction in capital controls, is countrywide but uncertain, because its...

We construct, on the basis of an original methodology and database, composite indices to measure domestic financial development in 26 emerging economies, using mature economies as a benchmark. Twenty-two variables are used and grouped according to three broad dimensions: (i) institutions and...

Were the U.S. to persistently earn substantially more on its foreign investments (quot;U.S. claimsquot;) than foreigners earn on their U.S. investments (quot;U.S. liabilitiesquot;), the likelihood that the current environment of sizeable global imbalances will evolve in a benign manner...

In this paper, we take a systematic look at global imbalances. First, we provide a definition of the phenomenon, and relate global imbalances to widening external positions of systemically important economies that reflect distortions or entail risks for the global economy. Second, we provide an...