Using a multi-country panel of banks, we study whether better capitalized banks experienced higher stock returns during the financial crisis. We differentiate among various types of capital ratios: the Basel risk-adjusted ratio; the leverage ratio; the Tier I and Tier II ratios; and the tangible...

Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to the world economy and the global financial system. This paper sets out to understand and quantify the impact of climate mitigation, with a focus on climate-related news, which represents an important information source that investors use to...

We analyze the performance of the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) and its integration with other markets. Using cointegration techniques, we find that the ASE and other Arab stock markets are cointegrated, which implies little long-run risk diversification. However, there is no cointegrating...

This paper documents the extent of financial linkages between Canada and the United States and explores the impact of changes in U.S. financial conditions on financial conditions and real economic activity in Canada. It shows that close to a quarter of financing by Canadian corporations is...

The announcement of the European Union enlargement coincided with a dramatic rise in stock prices in accession countries. This paper investigates the hypothesis that the rise in stock prices was a result of the repricing of systematic risk due to the integration of accession countries into the...

This paper investigates whether there is a different impact from changes in "new" and "old" economy stock valuations on private investment for seven OECD economies. A vector autoregressive model is estimated for each individual country, using quarterly data over the period 1990-2000. We find...

Similar to other emerging economies, the Egyptian stock market has recently experienced a remarkable run-up but also a major downturn. This paper analyzes the stock market from two angles. First, it compares the performance of the major stock price index with its underlying fundamentals. Second,...

This paper explores the behavior of emerging market mutual funds using a novel database covering the holdings of individual funds over the period January 1996 to March 1999. An examination of individual crises shows that, on average, funds withdrew money one month prior to the events. The degree...

Using company-level data, this paper examines the relative stock-market performance of firms with different foreign-exchange exposures around the time of the 1994/95 Mexican crisis. Contrary to what one might have expected given the alleged peso overvaluation, exporting firms outperformed the...

This paper takes stock of the current state of development of the financial systems in five Central European transition economies (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia) that are also leading EU accession candidates. It presents both a progress report and an...