This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indexes. Several existing index designs can be represented as special cases. We introduce a daily variant of the ECB’s CISS for the euro area and the US. The CISS aggregates a representative set of stress...

Recent academic research predicts that (i) equity mutual funds have a systematically better performance during periods of economic downturn and (ii) investors are willing to pay high fees for funds that provide recession insurance. In this paper, we test these hypotheses using international fund...

The paper reports estimation results and technical details on the estimation of financial cycles for a global sample of 34 advanced and developing countries over the period 1960Q1-2015Q4, as well as introduces a database of financial cycles. We estimate several versions of financial cycles for...

I provide a framework for understanding debt deleveraging in a group of _nancially integrated countries. During an episode of international deleveraging world consumption demand is depressed and the world interest rate is low, reecting a high propensity to save. If exchange rates are allowed to...

A large-scale model of the global economy is used to investigate the structural determinants of the Great Moderation and the transition to the Great Recession (1986-2010). Beside the global economy perspective, the model presents the novel feature of a broad range of included financial variables...

Our paper provides the first cross-country evidence on the distinct dynamics of tangible and intangible investments during and after the global financial crisis. The pre-crisis rise of intangible-to-tangible capital ratio was reversed outside the U.S. due to a greater decline of intangible...

Despite near-zero interest rates set by large central banks and other steps towards monetary easing in recent years, the economic environment has been characterised by low inflation globally and deflationary fears in some regions, while real economic activity has remained moderate. Although...

The global financial system has shown remarkable resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a sharp decline in economic activity and the initial financial market upheaval in March 2020. This paper takes stock of the factors that contributed to this resilience, focusing on the role of...

There is a general acceptance of the fact that a significant direct relationship between financial markets and macroeconomic variables exists, especially by considering the assertion that developed financial markets correspond to high GDP levels. This paper provides an investigation of the...

We study the relationship between credit expansions, macroeconomic fluctuations, and financial crises using a novel database on the sectoral distribution of private credit for 117 countries since 1940. We document that, during credit booms, credit flows disproportionately to the non-tradable...