For about three decades until the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Covered Interest Parity (CIP) appeared to hold quite closely-even as a broad macroeconomic relationship applying to daily or weekly data. Not only have CIP deviations significantly increased since the GFC, but potential macro...

We consider public debt from a long-term historical perspective, showing how the purposes for which governments borrow have evolved over time. Periods when debt-to-GDP ratios rose explosively as a result of wars, depressions and financial crises also have a long history. Many of these episodes...

A cross-country comparative analysis shows that there is substantial room for further integration of China into global financial markets, especially in the case of the international bond market. A further successful liberalization of the Chinese bond market would encompass not only loosening...

This paper takes stock of the evolution of the international monetary system over the last thousand years. Several points stand out from the analysis. One is the reluctance of governments to embrace radical changes in international monetary relations. Another is the conflict between external and...

We document a decline in the dollar share of international reserves since the turn of the century. This decline reflects active portfolio diversification by central bank reserve managers; it is not a byproduct of changes in exchange rates and interest rates, of reserve accumulation by a small...

We review the debate on the association of financial globalization with inequality. We show that the within-country distributional impact of capital account liberalization is context specific and that different types of flows have different distributional effects. Their overall impact depends on...