Whether cross-border financial market integration has raised global insurance, is still a controversial issue in the literature. If this is so, what should we observe in the data? The insurance literature emphasizes that efficient risk-sharing requires financial markets to channel resources to...

Financial globalisation has advanced notably in recent decades. In principle, greater integration should raise the degree of economic efficiency. However, the empirical evidence suggests that, for this to occur, countries should have well-designed economic institutions and sufficiently developed...

The last decade has been characterised by the pronounced volatility of capital flows. While cross-border capital flows can have many benefits for both advanced and emerging market economies, they may also carry risks, which require appropriate policy responses. Disentangling the push from the...

Emerging markets have gained prominence as recipients of capital flows since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. This raises their exposure and goes hand in hand with greater dependence on external financing and heightened sensitivity to global shocks. However, some differences can be...

This paper investigates how much of the current account adjustment after the global financial crisis in Spain can be explained by cyclical factors. For this purpose, we extend the IMF's external balance assessment methodology to allow for country-specific slopes and intercepts. The good fit of...