A key precursor of twentieth-century financial crises in emerging and advanced economies alike was the rapid buildup of leverage. Those emerging economies that avoided leverage booms during the 2000s also were most likely to avoid the worst effects of the twenty-first century's first global...

This paper studies the geography of wealth transfers during the 2008 global financial crisis. We construct valuation changes on bilateral external positions in equity, direct investment and portfolio debt at the height of the crisis to map who benefited and who lost on their external exposure....

In our book, Global Capital Markets: Integration, Crisis, and Growth, we traced out the evolution of the international monetary system using the framework of the “international monetary trilemma”: countries can enjoy at most two from the set {exchange-rate stability, open capital markets,...

In this paper we argue that the persistent global imbalances, the subprime crisis, and the volatile oil and asset prices that followed it, are tightly interconnected. They all stem from a global environment where sound and liquid financial assets are in scarce supply

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the 2009 global recession. Most emerging market and developing economies weathered the global recession relatively well. However, following a short-lived initial rebound in activity in 2010, the global economy and, especially, emerging market and...