Domestic investors hold a substantially larger proportion of their wealth portfolios in domestic assets than standard portfolio theory would suggest. This phenomenon has been called equity home bias.' In the absence of this home bias, investors would optimally diversify away domestic output...

According to financial theory, corporate hedging can increase shareholder value in the presence of capital market imperfections such as direct and indirect costs of financial distress, costly external financing, and taxes. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the extensive existing...

This paper investigates the motivations and practice of nonfinancial firms with regard to using financial options in their risk management activities. To this end, it provides a comprehensive account of the existing empirical evidence on the use of derivatives in general and options in...

Based on basic financial models and reports in the business press, exchange rate movements are generally believed to affect the value of nonfinancial firms. In contrast, the empirical research on nonfinancial firms typically produces fewer significant exposures estimates than researchers...

This paper estimates the foreign exchange rate exposure of 6,917 U.S. nonfinancial firms on the basis of stock prices and corporate cash flows. The results show that several firms are significantly exposed to at least one of the foreign exchange rates Canadian Dollar, Japanese Yen and Euro, and...

This essay has four objectives. The first is to document the current episode of capital inflows to Latin America based on data for ten Latin American countries. 6 The second is to compare the Latin American experience with that of a number of Asian countries that have also been the recipients of...

This study analyzes and provides empirical tests of early warning indicators of banking and currency crises in emerging economies. The aim is to identify key empirical regularities in the run-up to banking and currency crises that would enable officials and private market participants to...

One-sector inter-temporal models of the current account predict that a transitory shock to the terms of trade will lead to improvement in trade balance, while a persistent (or permanent) one could result in trade balance deterioration. This paper reexamines this issue in a two-sector small open...

Using a novel panel data set on corporate foreign-currency credit ratings and capital account restrictions in advanced and emerging economies during 1995–2004, we find a strong positive effect of capital account liberalization on firms' credit risk, as measured by corporate credit ratings. As...

We provide an overview of the recent developments of the literature on the determinants of long term capital flows, global imbalances and valuation effects. We present the main stylized facts of the new international financial landscape in which external balance sheets of countries have grown in...