This paper examines two competing approaches for calculating current account benchmarks, i.e. the external sustainability approach á la Lane and Milesi-Ferretti (LM) versus the structural current accounts literature (SCA) based on panel econometric techniques. The aim is to gauge the medium...

The global financial crisis has led to a revival of the empirical literature on current account imbalances. This paper contributes to that literature by investigating the importance of evaluating model and parameter uncertainty prior to reaching any firm conclusion. We explore three alternative...

This paper studies how the drivers of portfolio flows change across periods with a model where regression coefficients endogenously change over time in a continuous fashion. The empirical analysis of daily equity portfolio flows to emerging markets shows that the regression coefficients display...

The paper analyses the global spillovers of the Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policy measures. First, we find that Fed measures in the early phase of the crisis (QE1) were highly effective in lowering sovereign yields and raising equity markets, especially in the US relative to...

In light of persistently large net foreign liability (NFL) positions in several euro area countries, we analyse 138 episodes of sizeable NFL reductions for a broad sample of advanced and emerging economies. We provide stylised facts on the channels through which NFLs were reduced and estimate...

In the policy debate on the effectiveness of the Global Financial Safety Net, concerns have been raised that expectations of adverse effects of IMF programmes may deter countries from asking for an IMF programme when they need one, a form of "IMF stigma". We explore the existence of IMF...

This paper explores a natural connection between fiscal multipliers and foreign holdings of public debt. Although fiscal expansions can raise domestic economic activity through various channels, they can also have crowding-out effects if the resources used to acquire public debt reduce domestic...

We characterise the probability distributions of various categories of gross capital flows conditional on information contained in financial asset prices in a panel of emerging market economies, with a focus on "tail" events. Our framework, based on the quantile regression methodology, allows...

This paper studies how the drivers of portfolio flows change across periods with a model where regression coefficients endogenously change over time in a continuous fashion. The empirical analysis of daily equity portfolio flows to emerging markets shows that the regression coefficients display...

The paper analyses the global spillovers of the Federal Reserve's unconventional monetary policy measures. First, we find that Fed measures in the early phase of the crisis (QE1) were highly effective in lowering sovereign yields and raising equity markets, especially in the US relative to other...