Building on Beaudry, Nam and Wang (2011) - hereafter BNW -, we use survey data on consumer sentiment in order to identify the causal effects of confidence shocks on real economic activity in a selection of advanced economies. Starting from a set of closed-economy VAR models, we show that these...

This paper investigates the effects on employment in 21 Swedish regions of a monetary policy shock using a VAR model with exogenous foreign variables for the 1993:1-2007:4 period. The regional impulse responses clearly indicate asymmetric effects in which employment falls significantly in some...

This would seem an opportune moment to reshape banking systems in the Americas. But any effort to rethink and improve banking must acknowledge three major barriers. The first is a crisis of vision: there has been too little consideration of what kind of banking system would work best for...

This paper studies dynamic information acquisition in financial markets with information asymmetry. It first shows that multiplicity can arise in the information market due to a dynamic complementarity in information acquisition. It then characterizes interactions between information...

Countries' capital account policies might be contagious in the sense that domestic policies are driven by other countries' policies. A model of strategic interactions is developed to show that countries' best response to policy changes elsewhere consists in imitating this policy. Using a spatial...

The consensus view is that capital controls can effectively lengthen the maturity composition of capital inflows and increase the independence of monetary policy but are not generally effective at reducing net inflows and influencing the real exchange rate. This paper presents empirical evidence...

Foreign currency loans to the unhedged non-banking sector are remarkably prevalent in Europe and create a significant exchange-rate-induced credit risk to European banking sectors. In particular, Swiss franc (CHF)-denominated loans, popular in Eastern European countries, could trigger...

The emergence of global value chains not only leads to a magnification of trade in intermediate inputs but also to an extensive technology diffusion among the different production units involved in arms-length relationships. In this context, the lack of enforcement of intellectual property...

This paper constructs a theoretical model to show how the credibility of a country s commitment to an international gold standard regime is driven by fundamental determinants such as: 1) shifts in domestic policy, 2) a breakdown in cooperation between central banks, and 3) unilateral...

This paper studies monetary regime choice between monetary union and flexible exchange rate regime in a large open economy framework. The classical approach emphasizes that monetary unions are inherently costly because a single interest rate cannot respond effectively to different shocks of...