The Europpean Union will enter stage three of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999. The development of euro financial markets and thickness externalities in the use of the Euro as a means of of payment will be the major factors determining the importance of the euro as an international...

This paper analyses the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence linking enterprise performance in transition economies to the macroeconomic environment. Macroeconomic instability is traced to the unsustainability of the fiscal-financial and monetary programmes of the state and to regulatory...

We propose a simple quantitative method to linearize around the risky steady state of a small open economy. Unlike when the deterministic steady state is used, the net foreign asset position is well defined. We allow for stochastic income and stochastic interest rate.

Home bias is a perennial feature of international capital markets. We review various explanations of this puzzling phenomenon highlighting recent developments in macroeconomic modelling that incorporate international portfolio choices in standard two-country general equilibrium models. We refer...

We analyze the effects of financial and trade globalization on the likelihood of financial crashes in emerging markets. While trade globalization always makes crashes less likely, financial globalization may make them more likely, especially when trade costs are high. Pessimistic expectations...

This paper studies the geography of wealth transfers during the 2008 global financial crisis. We construct valuation changes on bilateral external positions in equity, direct investment and portfolio debt at the height of the crisis to map who benefited and who lost on their external exposure....

We study television prices across European countries and regions. Quality as measured by observable characteristics of televisions accounts for a large share of the international dispersion in prices. Rich economies tend to consume higher-quality goods, but sizeable international price...