No empirical evidence has yet emerged for the existence of a robust positive relationship between financial openness and economic growth. This paper argues that a key reason for the elusive evidence is the presence of a time-varying relationship between openness and growth over time: countries...

We assess monetary convergence preceding the implementation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) through Kalman filtering estimates of the risk premium of eleven forward exchange rates of European and non-European currencies. Since all participating currencies are in effect identical from...

This paper provides insights into the determinants of currency choice in cross-border bank lending, such as bilateral distance, financial and trade linkages to issuer countries of major currencies, and invoicing currency patterns. Cross-border bank lending in US dollars, and particularly in...

We add to the literature on the influence of the global financial cycle (GFC) and gyrations in capital flows. First, we build a new measure of the GFC based on a structural factor approach, which incorporates theoretical priors in its definition. This measure can also be decomposed in a...

We assess monetary convergence preceding the implementation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) through Kalman filtering estimates of the risk premium of eleven forward exchange rates of European and non-European currencies. Since all participating currencies are in effect identical from...

We add to the literature on the influence of the global financial cycle (GFC) and gyrations in capital flows. First, we build a new measure of the GFC based on a structural factor approach, which incorporates theoretical priors in its definition. This measure can also be decomposed in a...

This paper addresses the question of whether sterilized central bank intervention systematically affects exchange rates. Furthermore, the paper analyzes whether a central bank can conduct its intervention operations in a specific manner, in order to increase the likelihood of achieving its...

Focusing on emerging market currency arrangements, we build a model of an exchange rate peg with escape clauses and output persistence. We first show how output persistence works as an additional 'fundamental' so that an exogenous increase in persistence can make the currency peg more vulnerable...

Learning rules are increasingly being used in macroeconomic models. However one criticism that has been levelled at this assumption is that the choice of variables for inclusion in the learning rule, and the actual specification of the learning rule itself, is arbitrary. In this paper we test...

This paper surveys the optimum currency area (OCA) literature. It is organised into four phases: the 'pioneering phase' which put forward the OCA theory and its properties, the 'reconciliation phase' when its diverse facets were combined, the 'reassessment phase' that led to the 'new OCA theory'...