The policy response to the COVID-19 shock included regulatory easing across many jurisdictions to facilitate the flow of credit to the economy and mitigate a further ampli-fication of the shock through tighter financial conditions. Using an intraday event study,this paper examines how stock...

In recent years, portfolio flows to emerging markets have become increasingly large and volatile. Using weekly portfolio fund flows data, the paper finds that their short-run dynamics are driven mostly by global “push” factors. To what extent do these cross-border flows and global risk...

In distilling a vast literature spanning the rational — irrational divide, this paper offers reflections on why asset bubbles continue to threaten economic stability despite financial markets becoming more informationally-efficient, more complete, and more heavily influenced by sophisticated...

This paper provides an overview of sovereign debt portfolio risks and discusses various liability management operations (LMOs) and instruments used by public debt managers to mitigate these risks. Debt management strategies analyzed in the context of helping reach debt portfolio targets and...

This paper provides an overview of the strategic and operational issues as well as institutional challenges, related to the implementation of the Sovereign Asset and Liability Management (SALM) approach. Application of an SALM framework allows the authorities to identify and monitor sovereign...

In the past few years there has been a large increase in portfolio capital flows into emerging markets, mostly fueled by mutual funds and other institutional investors. Based on a simple variance ratio test, this paper finds that emerging stock markets as a group experienced a sharp increase in...

Stock markets play a key role in corporate financing in Asia. However, despite their increasing importance in terms of size and cross-border investment activity, the region's markets are reputed to be more “idiosyncratic” and less reliant on economic and corporate fundamentals in their...

Asset allocation decisions of international investors are at the core of capital flows. This paper explores the impact of these decisions on long-term government bond yields, using a quarterly investor base dataset for 22 advanced economies over 2004-2012. We find that a one percentage point...

We provide a systematic analysis of the properties of individual returns to wealth using twelve years ofpopulation data from Norway's administrative tax records. We document a number of novel results.First, during our sample period individuals earn markedly different average returns on their...

This paper explores the macroeconomic impact of social unrest, using a novel index based on news reports. The findings are threefold. First, unrest has an adverse effect on economic activity, with GDP remaining on average 0.2 percentage points below the pre-shock baseline six quarters after a...