This paper revisits the relative importance of global versus country-specific factors underlying stock returns. It constructs a new firm level data set covering emerging and developed markets and estimates a simple factor model, which breaks down stock returns into a global business cycle...

What are the constraints that have stalled EMs efforts to reuse their securities in international financial centers? We discuss the economics of collateral re-use and the present institutional structure in Asian and Latin American countries. Our empirical investigation suggests pledgeability...

This paper explores the determinants of long-term government bond yields in the Group of Seven (G-7) economies and analyzes the factors that could explain the conundrum of very low rates in the face of a variety of adverse factors in recent years. In particular, the paper focuses on 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...

This paper investigates if there is a different impact from changes in ""new"" and ""old"" economy stock valuations on private consumption. Estimating a reduced-form VAR for seven OECD countries for the 1990s, it is found that the impact from changes in old economy stock valuations on...

We study bank portfolio allocations during the transition of the real sector to a knowledge economy in which firms use less tangible capital and invest more in intangible assets. We show that, as firms shift toward intangible assets that have lower collateral values, banks reallocate their...