Im vergangenen Jahrzehnt gingen beträchtliche Kapitalströme aus den entwickeltenVolkswirtschaften mit einem starken Kreditwachstum in den Ländern des westlichen Balkans,der Türkei und den GUS einher. Dennoch konnten fast alle Länder der Region – ungeachtetihrer unterschiedlichen...

In this paper, the influence of information costs on the integration of Northern European financial markets between ca. 1350 and 1560 is explored. The approach is based on splitting information costs into their constitutive components and on measuring one of these, i.e. the costs of transmitting...

China’s emergence as a major player in world trade is well known, but its rising role in global finance is perhaps underappreciated. China is the second largest creditor in the world today, with a net creditor position of exceeding 30% of GDP in 2007. In this paper, we test the importance of...

The establishment of European monetary union (EMU) was widely expected to causeprice convergence among member states. In an investigation of this claim, the presentstudy avoids problems of comparability and representativeness by using an extremelydetailed and comprehensive scanner database on...

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...

In this paper we analyse the comparative pricing of vanilla and GDP linkedsovereign debt. The key feature of GDP linked bonds is that their cashflowscoupons,principal or both-are linked to the evolution of the country’s nationalincome. While it has long been argued that indexing debt to...

Can pegging reduce real as well as nominal, and multilateral as well as bilateralexchange rate volatility? We investigate this issue using monthly data for 139countries from January 1990 to June 2006...

In currency crises, unlike in orderly devaluations, the financial markets dominateevents. It is shown that currency collapses (crises followed by depreciations) have hada much greater adverse impact in emerging markets (defined as relatively highincomedeveloping countries exposed to...