Guided by a macroeconomic model in which non-energy commodity prices are endogenously determined, we apply a new factor-based identification strategy to decompose the historical sources of changes in commodity prices and global economic activity. The model yields a factor structure for commodity...

We analyze how a wealth shift to emerging countries may lead to instability in developed countries. Investors exposed to expropriation risk are willing to pay a safety premium to invest in countries with good property rights. Domestic intermediaries compete for such cheap funding by carving out...

We quantify the reaction of U.S. equity, bond futures, and exchange rate returns to oil price shocks driven by oil inventory news. Across most sectors, equity prices decrease in response to higher oil prices before the 2007/08 crisis but increase after it. Positive oil price shocks cause a...

We examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in North America. This production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil-recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable. We first...

Using a new data set, we examine the characteristics and dynamics of cross-border mergers and acquisitions during emerging-market financial crises, that is, so-called "fire-sale FDI". Our findings shed fresh light on whether the transactions undertaken during crisis periods differ in fundamental...

This paper combines firm-level data from 89 countries with updated country-level data on financial structure, and uses two estimation approaches. It finds that in low-income countries, labor growth is swifter in countries with a higher level of private credit/gross domestic product; the positive...

Does related lending have positive or negative effects on the development of banking systems? This paper analyzes a unique cross-country data set covering 74 countries from 1990 to 2007, and finds that related lending, on average, does not have any effect on the growth of credit. The authors do...