This article examines the extent to which subnational governments may drive sovereign risk premiums. Is subnational fiscal policy affecting the interest rates on central government bonds? Furthermore, we focus on a number of causal mechanisms that may mitigate or reinforce these upstream...

This paper investigates how the withdrawal of banks from their cross-border business impacted the borrowing costs of European firms since the crisis. We combine aggregate information on total and cross-border credit with firm-level survey data for the period 2010–2014. We find that the decline...

In this lecture I document the proliferation of gross international asset and liability positions and discuss some consequences for individual countries’ external adjustment processes and for global financial stability. In light of the rapid growth of gross global financial flows and the...

We examine the effects that a country's net capital flows have on the (border) prices that a country pays for its imports of goods. Using data from 2000 to 2009 for 11 euro area countries we utilize a pricing-to-market specification to study exporters' pricing behavior to the rest of the...

While the current account of the euro area as a whole has remained almost balanced in the past two decades, several member countries have sizeable deficits or surpluses. In this paper, we interpret these imbalances as indicators of net capital flows among the euro-area countries. We distinguish...

We construct a new database of bilateral financial flows among euro area countries and their major world partners and explore the role of financial links in the accumulation and then adjustment of current account imbalances in the euro area. The data show that the geography of financial flows...

This paper investigates the impact of macroannouncements, government bond auctions and rating actions on the 10-year government bond spreads for Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain with respect to Germany. Using a unique tick-by-tick dataset over 1/02/2009–05/31/2012, we identify...

Is generalized debt relief an effective development strategy, or should assistance be tailored to countries' characteristics? To answer this question, the authors build a simple model in which recipient governments reveal their creditworthiness if donors offer them to choose between aid and debt...

The paper analyses the drivers of sovereign risk for 31 advanced and emerging economies during the European sovereign debt crisis. It shows that a deterioration in countries' fundamentals and fundamentals contagion – a sharp rise in the sensitivity of financial markets to fundamentals – are...

This paper analyses the dynamic effects of fiscal imbalances in a given EMU member state on the borrowing costs of other countries in the euro area. The estimation of a multivariate, multi-country time series model (specifically a Global VAR, or GVAR) using quarterly data for the EMU period...