This paper studies the cyclical pattern of ex post markups in the banking system using balance-sheet data for a large set of countries. Markups are strongly countercyclical even after controlling for financial development, banking concentration, operational costs, inflation, and simultaneity or...

This paper analyzes the impact of limited enforceable international loans on international risk sharing and trade fluctuations in a two-country two-good endowment economy. Our specification of the punishment threat allows the exclusion from trade to last only finitely many periods and...

Recent research convincingly shows that crises beget reform. Although the consensus is that economic crises foster macroeconomic stabilization, it is silent on which types of crises cause which types of reform. Is it economic or political crises that are the most important drivers of structural...

During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....

This paper aims at assessing the role of the United States in the global economy and its evolution over time. The emergence of large economic players, like China, is likely to have weakened the role of the U.S. economy as a driver of global growth. Based on a Global VAR modelling approach, this...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the degree of global cyclical interdependence over the period 1960-2005. We categorize the 106 countries in our sample into three groupsindustrial countries, emerging markets, and other developing economies. Using a dynamic factor model, we then decompose...

As a result of the current global financial crisis, in 2009 the world economy is likely to experience the largest contraction since World War II and the unemployment rate to reach historical highs in many countries. The fact that the current global crisis is originated from the U.S. and followed...

We analyze the implications of financial openness to macroeconomic volatility in a small open economy. Major macroeconomic aggregates show non-monotonic volatility patterns with respect to the degree of financial openness in the model without domestic financial frictions. The introduction of...

It is well documented that business cycles of developed countries are characterised by persistent output fluctuations, and this has been the subject of much theoretical interest. However, the case for developing countries has been somewhat neglected in the literature. This paper addresses this...