The global financial crisis has highlighted the potential of financial conditions for influencing real economic activity. We examine the linkages between the financial and real sectors in the euro area, finding that (i) bank loan supply responds negatively to declines in bank soundness; (ii) a...

Commodities are back following a stellar run of price performance, attracting financial investor attention. What are the fundamental reasons to hold commodities? One reason is the exposure offered to underlying risk factors. In this paper, I assess the macro risk exposure offered by commodity...

This paper, using T-GARCH models, finds that the United States has been the major source of price and volatility spillovers to stock markets in the Asian region during three different periods in the last decade: the pre-Long Term Capital Management crisis period, the "tech bubble" period, and...

This paper calibrates the production functions of 176 countries to fit 2003 data and examines the capital flows that emerge, when labor forces change according to the 2007 UN population projections. It finds that demographic factors are no help in correcting today's global imbalances; that...

We investigate the extent of regional financial integration in the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The limited volume data available suggests that regional integration is non-negligible. Bahrain and Kuwait investments especially are oriented towards the region. The development...

We examine the usefulness of the spreads between the e/p ratio of the S&P 500 index and the yields on 3-month and 10-year Treasury securities as indicators of future market conditions. We find that while spreads are not particularly useful in a regression framework, the extreme values of the...

Extensive research on the linkages between monetary conditions and stock returns has been conducted in developed countries. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in developing countries. This paper therefore aims to study the long believed asymmetrical relationship between changes in...

In this paper we construct a model of stock market, interest rate and output interaction which is a generalization of the well known 1981 model of Blanchard. We allow for imperfect substitutability between stocks and bonds in the asset market and for lagged portfolio adjustment. The reaction of...