Compared with China's dominance in world trade, its expanding role in global finance is poorly documented and understood. Over the past decades, China has exported record amounts of capital to the rest of the world. Many of these financial flows are not reported to the IMF, the BIS or the World...

China’s lending boom to developing countries is morphing into defaults and debt distress. Given the secrecy surrounding China’s loans, also the associated defaults remain “hidden”, as missed payments and restructuring details are not disclosed. We construct an encompassing dataset of...

Surges and reversals of short-term foreign liabilities are often held responsible for instabilities in international financial markets. Yet, empirical evidence on the factors determining the maturity of capital flows is scant. This paper analyzes the determinants of foreign assets of German...

Germany is world champion in exporting capital ("Exportweltmeister"). No other country invests larger amounts of savings outside its borders. However, Germany plays in the third division when it comes to investment performance, as we show in this paper. We study the returns on German foreign...

This paper shows that China has launched a new global system for cross-border rescue lending to countries in debt distress. We build the first comprehensive dataset on China’s overseas bailouts between 2000 and 2021 and provide new insights into China’s growing role in the global financial...

This paper investigates if the euro's effect on euro-area trade differs across trade sectors and across country pairs, and to what degree heterogeneity matters for estimating the aggregate euro effect. Time-varying latent variables, which are specific to each sector in each country pair, control...

The paper analyzes one important aspect of the constitutional debate: the allocation of econornie competences between the EU and the mernber states. It takes the theory of fiscal federalism as a starting point for an optimal allocation of economic competences. The main message of the theory is...

This paper is one of the first to show systematically that the motives for sovereign lending to African countries differed considerably between China and Western countries during the last two decades. While Chinese lending mainly served its own economic or geopolitical objectives, which is...

The Eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU) is likely to give a further boost to trade and capital flows, yet empirical evidence on the possible magnitudes is still scarce. This paper uses four different datasets to estimate the determinants of international asset holdings and trade...

Die neue Welle des Regionalismus in Lateinamerika bietet mehr als alten Wein in neuen Schläuchen. Dennoch drohen hohe Erwartungen enttäuscht zu werden, die in die regionale Integration gesetzt werden. Die Entwicklung der ausländischen Direktinvestitionen in Lateinamerika in den neunziger...