We explore the link between international stock market comovement and the degree to which firms operate globally. Using stock returns and balance sheet data for companies in twenty countries, we estimate a factor model that decomposes stock returns into global, country- and industry-specific...

This paper examines a unique data set consisting of Japanese equity returns for the Friday, Monday, and Tuesday surrounding U.S. Monday holiday closures. The objective is to neutralize the impact of spillover effects from New York to Tokyo. Prior studies find that Japanese returns are negative...

In this paper we examine integration between emerging and U.S. debt and equity markets. We first investigate price changes around significant "events," in this case changes in short-term U.S. interest rates brought about by actions of the Federal Reserve. Second, we estimate the predictability...

At the turn of the century, the role of culture in society is changing. One facet of this change is the relation between culture and finance. Globalisation has led to an increasing competition between financial centres worldwide and culture has become one determinant of competitiveness. But,...

This paper presents a new concept – the global roles of currencies. The concept combines the domestic and international (cross-border) use of currencies and therefore captures the overall importance of different currencies in a globalised economy. The measure of a currency’s global role is...

We analyze persistence in patterns of bilateral financial investment using data on US investors’ holdings of foreign bonds. We document a “history effect” in which the pattern of holdings seven decades ago continues to influence holdings today. 10 to 15% of the cross-country variation in...

Does distance matter for the volatility of international real and financial transactions? We show that it does, in addition to its well-established relevance for the level of trade. A simple model of trade with endogenous markups shows that demand shocks have a larger impact on trade between...

This paper examines how UK banks channel capital inflows to the individual sectors of the domestic economy and to overseas residents. Information on the source country of foreign capital deposited with UK banks allows us to construct a novel Bartik instrument for capital inflows. Our results...