The sharp increase in both gross and net international capital flows over the past two decades has prompted renewed interest in their determinants. Most existing theories of international capital flows are based on one-asset models, which have implications only for net capital flows, not for...

Switzerland's international investment position shows a puzzling feature since 1999: Large and persistent current account surpluses have failed to boost the value of Swiss foreign assets. In this paper, we link this pattern to the substantial increase in the leveraging of Switzerland's...

We present a model where policies of free capital mobility can signal governments' future policies, but the informativeness of the signal depends on the path of world interest rates. Capital flows to "emerging markets" reflect investors' perception of these markets' political risk. With low...

This paper proposes a model to investigate the effects of monetary policy in an emerging market economy that experiences a sudden stop of capital inflows. The model features credit frictions, debt denominated in foreign currency, imported inputs, and households that have access to the...

This paper addresses the relationship between age distributions, national savings and the current account balance. The results point to substantial demographic effects, with increases in both the youth and old-age dependency ratios associated with lower savings rates. They also point to...

This paper develops and tests a theoretical model that allows for the endogenous decision of banks to engage in international and global banking. International banking, where banks raise capital in the home market and lend it abroad, is driven by differences in factor endowments across...

This paper proposes a theory of the fiscal foundations of inflation based on imperfect knowledge and learning. The theory is similar in spirit to, but distinct from, unpleasant monetarist arithmetic and the fiscal theory of the price level. Because the assumption of imperfect knowledge breaks...

Countries' concerns about the value of their currency have been studied and documented extensively in the literature. Capital controls can be—and often are—used as a tool to manage exchange rate fluctuations. This paper investigates whether countries can benefit from using such a tool. We...

International financial linkages, particularly through global bank flows, generate important questions about the consequences for economic and financial stability, including the ability of countries to conduct autonomous monetary policy. I address the monetary autonomy issue in the context of...

This paper presents a model in which a government's current capital controls policy signals future policies. Controls on capital outflows evolve in response to news on technology, contingent on government attitudes toward taxation of capital. When there is uncertainty over government types, a...