In the debate on the benefits of international financial integration, recent literature has emphasized the development of domestic markets as a precondition. This paper offers an alternative view. Lack of competition in domestic financial systems may prevent countries from reaping the benefits...

Swap lines between advanced-economy central banks are a new important part of the global financial architecture. This paper analyses their monetary policy effects from three perspectives. First, from the perspective of the central banks, it shows that the swap line mimics discount-window credit...

This paper examines the impact of foreign currency hedging demand on the foreign exchange market. First, the paper documents deviations from covered interest parity (CIP) for Mexico after the global financial crisis (GFC), and then it evaluates the effect of two variables in a regression-based...

We investigate the relation between foreign exchange (FX) order flow and the forward bias. We outline a decomposition of the forward bias according to which a negative correlation between interest rate differentials and order flow creates a time-varying risk premium consistent with that bias....

The currency carry trade (CCT) strategy - borrowing in low-interest-rate currencies and investing in high-interest-rate currencies - has been found to generate excess returns that cannot be explained by common risk factors. We argue that companies implicitly execute carry trades, when they have...

On September 3-4, 2009 SUERF and Utrecht University School of Economicsorganized the Colloquium "The Quest for Stability" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium.

The emergence and persistence of basis spreads in cross-currency basis swaps (CCBS) since the global financial crisis have become a mystery in international finance, as they violate the long-standing principle of covered interest parity (CIP). We argue that the phenomenon is no mystery but...

We argue that the breakdown of covered interest parity is no mystery but merely a reflection of the new trading environment in which uncollateralized and collateralized transactions have ceased to be treated as equivalent, rendering unsecured interest rates inappropriate for pricing secured...