We study how financial market efficiency affects a measure of diversification of output across industrial sectors borrowed from the portfolio allocation literature. Using data on sector-level value added for a wide cross section of countries and for various levels of disaggregation, we construct...

This paper provides an empirical assessment of interdependence and contagion across three asset classes (bonds, stocks, and currencies) for over 60 economies over the period 1998 to 2011. Using a global VAR, we test for changes in the transmission mechanism – both within and cross-market...

In light of rapidly increasing foreign equity liability positions of emerging market economies, we test for a necessary condition of international risk sharing, namely for systematic patterns between idiosyncratic output fluctuations and financial market developments. Panel analysis of 22...

We use the introduction of a financial transaction tax (FTT) in France in 2012 to test competing theories on its impact. We find no support for the idea that an FTT improves market quality by affecting the composition of trading volume. Instead, our results are in line with the hypothesis that a...

In this paper, we conduct an analysis of the implications of capital controls for financial stability. We study a financial transaction (Tobin) tax applicable to cross-border capital flows in a multi-good, multi-country dynamic equilibrium model with incomplete financial markets and...

We identify the effect of financial integration on international business cycle synchronization, by utilizing a confidential database on banks' bilateral exposure and employing a country-pair panel instrumental variables approach. Countries that become more integrated over time have less...

We explore a view of the crisis as a shock to investor sentiment that led to the collapse of a bubble or pyramid scheme in financial markets. We embed this view in a standard model of the financial accelerator and explore its empirical and policy implications. In particular, we show how the...

There is already a substantial literature documenting the fact that low yield currencies typically appreciate during times of global financial stress and behave as safe havens. The main objective of this paper is to find out what the fundamentals of safe haven currencies are. We analyse a large...

We analyze persistence in patterns of bilateral financial investment using data on US investors' holdings of foreign bonds. We document a 'history effect' in which the pattern of holdings seven decades ago continues to influence holdings today. 10 to 15% of the cross-country variation in US...

The causes of the 2008 collapse and subsequent surge in global capital flows remain an open and highly controversial issue. Employing a factor model coupled with a dataset of high-frequency portfolio capital flows to 50 economies, the paper finds that common shocks – key crisis events as well...