We explore how a relatively small amount of heterogeneous securities created turmoil in financial markets in much of the world in 2007 and 2008. The drivers of the financial turmoil and the financial crisis of 2008 were heterogeneous securities that were hard to value. These securities created...

Chinas Außenpolitik und internationale Beziehungen haben sich seit den 1980er Jahren stark verändert. Eine Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Akteure nimmt inzwischen Einfluss auf die Gestaltung der chinesischen Außenbeziehungen. Außerdem ist parallel zur erfolgreichen ökonomischen Entwicklung auch...

We present evidence on the changing dynamics of the yield curve from 1998 to 2011. We identify four different phases. As expected, the financial crisis represents a period of elevated yield volatility, but it can be split into two distinct periods. The split occurs when the Federal Reserve...

In the paper we test for the different reactions of stock markets to the current financial crisis. We focus on Central European stock markets, namely the Czech, Polish and Hungarian ones, and compare them to the German and U.S. benchmark stock markets. Using wavelet analysis, we decompose a time...

In the paper we research statistical properties of the Central European stock markets. We focus mainly on the tail behavior of the Czech, Polish, and Hungarian stock markets and compare them to the benchmark U.S. and German stock markets. We fit the data of the 4-year period from March 2005 to...

This paper considers financial, operational, solvency, and performance ratios, in order to detect when there were balance sheets’ variations related to the 1994 Mexican currency crisis. Quarterly results for 88 non-financial Mexican companies that survived the crisis are used, and tests for...

A macro-prudential policy maker can manage risks to financial stability only if currentand future risks can be reliably assessed. We propose a novel framework to assessfinancial system risk. Using a dynamic factor framework based on state-space methods, we model latent macro-financial and credit...

The Basel II Accord requires that banks and other Authorized Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) communicate their daily risk forecasts to the appropriate monetary authorities at the beginning of each trading day, using one or more risk models to measure Value-at-Risk (VaR). The risk estimates of...

In this note I argue that the desirability of fiscal policy in response to the current crisis depends on whether one views the current crisis as a temporary deviation from a unique equilibrium or as a bad equilibrium out of multiple equilibria. The paper presents a simple Diamond (1982) type of...