This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the relative importance of global structural shocks for changes in financial conditions across a sample of emerging market economies. We disentangle four key drivers of global financial markets (oil supply shocks, global economic news shocks,...

How does access to credit impact consumption volatility? Theory and evidence from advanced economies suggests that greater household access to finance smooths consumption. Evidence from emerging markets, where consumption is usually more volatile than income, indicates that financial reform...

We establish basic facts about the external finance premium. Tens of millions of individual loan contracts extended to euro area firms allow studying the determinants of the external finance premium at the country, bank, firm, and contract levels of disaggregation. At the country level, the...

This paper provides the first assessment of the contribution of idiosyncratic shocks to aggregate fluctuations in an emerging market using confidential data on the universe of Chilean firms. We find that idiosyncratic shocks account for more than 40 percent of the volatility of aggregate sales....

Over the past two decades, most emerging market economies witnessed two key developments. A marked process of financial integration with the rest of the world, arguably turning these economies more vulnerable to global financial shocks; and an improvement of macroeconomic fundamentals, helping...

Over the past two decades, most emerging market economies witnessed two key developments. A marked process of financial integration with the rest of the world, arguably turning these economies more vulnerable to global financial shocks; and an improvement of macroeconomic fundamentals, helping...

This paper examines financial market comovements across European transition economies and compares their experience to that of their regions. Correlations in monthly indices of exchange market pressures can partly be explained by direct trade linkages, but not by measures of other fundamentals....

The entire difference between a mild downturn and a devastating crisis is the occurrence of sharp fire sales of domestic assets and possibly foreign exchange and the ensuing collapse in the balance sheets of both the financial and nonfinancial sector. Why and how do such crises materialize? And...

This paper develops a stylized, small, open economy macro model that incorporates an explicit and non-trivial role for financial intermediation. It illustrates how such a model could be used for policy analysis in an emerging market economy where policymakers are concerned about risks associated...