We examine the relative importance of country, industry, world market and currency risk factors for international stock returns. Our approach focuses on testing the mean-variance efficiency of the various factor portfolios. An unconditional analysis does not show significant differences between...

Based on a dataset of 112 emerging economies and developing countries, this paper addresses the question whether the accumulation of international reserves has effectively protected countries during the 2008–09 financial crisis. More specifically, the paper investigates the relation between...

The recent global crisis has sparked interest in the relationship between income inequality, credit booms, and financial crises. Rajan (2010) and Kumhof and Rancière (2011) propose that rising inequality led to a credit boom and eventually to a financial crisis in the US in the first decade of...

This paper simultaneously analyzes wake-up-call and pure contagion of sovereign risk in the Eurozone during its recent financial crisis. Pure contagion of sovereign risk means the transmission of negative effects after a shock to a country which are not reflected in the risk pricing of...

The surge in cross-border banking prior to global financial crises took place not only in the interbank market but also in the retail market, e.g. between banks and their private customers abroad. We utilize confidential data to estimate for the first time the effects of banking, currency and...

By studying the cross-country incidence of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, we document a structural break in the way emerging economies responded to the global shock. Contrary to popular perceptions, emerging economies suffered growth collapses (relative to the pre-crisis levels)...

This paper tests for the transmission of the 2007–2010 financial and sovereign debt crises to fifteen EMU countries. We use daily data from 2003 to 2010 on country financial and non-financial stock market indexes to analyze the stock market returns for three country groups within EMU: North,...

Carry-trade strategies which consist of buying forward high-yield currencies tend to yield positive excess returns when global financial markets are booming, whereas they generate losses during crises. Firstly, we show that the sovereign default risk, which is taken on by investing in high-yield...

We investigate how “news” affected domestic interest spreads vis-à-vis Germany and how it propagated to other countries during the recent crisis period, thereby distinguishing between the so-called GIIPS countries and other European countries. We make original use of the Eurointelligence...

We study the variation of sovereign credit default swaps (CDSs) of eurozone countries, their persistence and co-movements, with particular attention given to the impact of the financial crisis. Specifically, using a dual fractional integration model, we test the evidence of long memory for CDSs...