The US economy is often referred to as the "banker to the world," due to its unique role in supplying global reserve assets and funding foreign risky investment. This paper develops a general equilibrium model to analyze and quantify the contribution of this role to rising wealth concentration...

We estimate world cycles using a new quarterly dataset of output, credit and asset prices assembled using IMF archives and covering a large set of advanced and emerging economies since 1950. World cycles, both real and financial, exist and are generally driven by US shocks. But their impact is...

Globally, financial institutions have increased their holdings of domestic sovereign debt, tightening the linkage between the health of the financial system and the level of sovereign debt, or the "financial sector-sovereign nexus," during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In South Africa, the...

Abstract In this paper we ask whether countries can influence their exposure to changes in global financial conditions. Specifically, we show that even though we can model cross-country capital flows via a global factor that closely tracks changes in global financial conditions, there is a large...

The Financial Action Task Force's gray list publicly identifies countries with strategic deficiencies in their AML/CFT regimes (i.e., in their policies to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism). How much gray-listing affects a country's capital flows is of interest to policy...

We quantify the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on firm leverage. When home currency appreciates, firms who hold foreign currency debt and local currency assets observe higher net worth as appreciation lowers the value of their foreign currency debt. These firms can borrow more as a result...

This paper examines empirically the role of macroprudential policy in addressing the effects of external shocks on financial stability. In a sample of 62 economies over the period of 2000: Q1-2016: Q4, our dynamic panel regressions show that an appreciation of the local exchange rate is...