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...

Sustained large U.S. current account deficits have led some economists and policymakers to worry that future current account adjustment could occur through a sudden and disruptive depreciation of the dollar and a sharp drop in U.S. consumption. Two factors that, to date, have cast doubt on such...

This paper evaluates the consequences of the integration of international asset markets when goods markets are characterized by price rigidities. Using an open economy general equilibrium model with volatility in the money markets, we show that such an integration is not universally beneficial....

In an in‡uential series of contributions, Kraay and Ventura (2000, 2003) o¤er a“new rule” for the current account: in response to a temporary income shock, thechange in the current account is equal to the change in saving times the ratio of netforeign assets to wealth. We analyze the...

We develop a new theory of international capital flows based on dispersed in-formation across individual investors. There is extensive evidence of informationheterogeneity within and across countries, which has proven critical to under-standing asset price behavior. We introduce information...

The relationship between asset prices and fundamentals is characterized by both disconnect and predictability: asset prices are largely disconnected from current publicly observed fundamentals and at the same time contain information about future fundamentals, even when conditioning on current...

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

This paper evaluates the consequences of the integration of international asset markets when goods markets are characterized by price rigidities. Using an open economy general equilibrium model with volatility in the money markets, we show that such an integration is not universally beneficial....

We draw on a new data set on the use of Swiss francs and other currencies by European banks to assess the patterns of foreign currency bank lending. We show that the patterns differ sharply across foreign currencies. The Swiss franc is used predominantly for lending to residents, especially...

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...