Spillovers from South Africa into the other members of the Souther Africa Customs Union (known as the BLNS for Botstwana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland) are substantial reflecting sizeable real and financial interlinkages. However, shocks to real GDP growth in South Africa do not seem to...

Like all crises in the past, the economic downturn of 2008 - 2009 caused some frictions in the international trading system. Import tariffs, the traditional instrument for protecting domestic industries, however, have not played the primary role in this, particularly not in industrialised...

This paper examines whether European integration, manifesting itself in increased trade and FDI linkages, new specializations and economic policy coordination, contributed to the synchronization of business cycles in the enlarged EU. We estimate the effects on bilateral growth rate correlations...

While capital flows to emerging markets bring numerous benefits, they are also known to create macroeconomic imbalances (economic overheating, currency overvaluation) and increase financial vulnerabilities (domestic credit growth, bank leverage, foreign currency-denominated lending). But are all...

Large current account deficits, and the corresponding reliance on capital flows from abroad, can increase a country's vulnerability to periods of heightened risk and uncertainty. This paper develops a framework to evaluate such vulnerabilities. It highlights the central importance of two...

This paper examines the role of country-specific sources of output and interest rate or exchange rate volatility in driving FDI activities. Building on a dataset with bilateral FDI flows among 24 OECD economies over the period 1985-2007, we find that nominal and real volatility strongly deter...

I study the aggregate implications of the entry of Multinational Firms (MNFs) in a two country Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model in which firms have heterogeneous productivity in the sense of Ghironi and Melitz (2005). Unlike the extant open economy macroeconomics literature, this...

The period 1973-2009 marked a nearly 16% annual outflow of foreign investment for the global economy as the policymakers persisted with trade liberalization to attract foreign capital for sustainable economic growth and development. The adverse impact of capital flight due to investment outflows...

International investment agreements define State commitments on investment protection, but also shed light on how these commitments are to be integrated with other public policy objectives. Investment protection in the context of environmental regulation has been a frequent source of controversy...

At one time, inward direct investment in China was only possible using foreign exchange. Since the ban on using the renminbi to settle trade transactions was lifted in July 2009, however, restrictions on the use of the renminbi for inward direct investment have also been lifted on a trial basis...