Foreign exchange operates as a two-tiered over-the-counter (OTC) market dominatedby large, strategic dealers. Using proprietary high frequency data on quotesby the largest foreign exchange dealer banks in the dealer-to-customer (D2C) market,we find a significant heterogeneity in their behavior....

We propose a "debt view" to explain the dominant international role of the dollar and provide broad empirical support for it. Within a simple capital structure model in which firms optimally choose the currency composition of their debt, we derive conditions under which all firms issue debt in a...

Since the global financial crisis, the Swiss National Bank has been accumulating reserve assets amounting to the size of the Swiss GDP. Yet, the Swiss franc is still considered to be significantly over-valued. This paper analyzes the drivers behind the new situation and discusses challenges and...

Over the last decade foreign bond portfolio positions in US dollar assets have risen above the reciprocal US investor positions in foreign currencies. In periods of increased economic uncertainty, institutional investors hedge their international bond positions, which creates a net hedging...

We develop a general equilibrium model with intermediaries at the heart of international financial markets. Global intermediaries bargain with households and extract rents for providing access to foreign claims. The behavior of intermediaries, by tilting state prices, breaks monetary neutrality...

We develop an equilibrium model of real and financial market integration in which real firms and financial investors independently decide on their investment into different locations (countries). We show that, in the presence financial frictions, firms' real investment choices become strategic...

We introduce the concept of “negative bubbles” as the mirror image of standard financial bubbles, in which positive feedback mechanisms may lead to transient accelerating price falls. To model these negative bubbles, we adapt the Johansen-Ledoit-Sornette (JLS) model of rational expectation...

We report strong evidence that changes of momentum, i.e. "acceleration", defined as the first difference of successive returns, provide better performance and higher explanatory power than momentum. The corresponding Γ-factor explains the momentum-sorted portfolios entirely but not the reverse....

We introduce a model of super-exponential financial bubbles with two assets (risky and risk-free), in which fundamentalist and chartist traders co-exist. Fundamentalists form expectations on the return and risk of a risky asset and maximize their constant relative risk aversion expected utility...

We propose a dynamic Rational Expectations (RE) bubble model of prices with the intention to exploit it for and evaluate it on optimal investment strategies. Our bubble model is defined as a geometric Brownian motion combined with separate crash (and rally) discrete jump distributions associated...