We provide a systematic analysis of the bilateral factors driving portfolio equity holdings across countries. We find that bilateral equity holdings are strongly correlated with bilateral trade in goods and services. Larger bilateral positions are also associated with proxies for informational...

The founders of the Bretton Woods System sixty years ago were primarily concerned with orderly exchange rate adjustment in a world economy that was characterized by widespread restrictions on international capital mobility. In contrast, the rapid pace of financial globalization during recent...

The period preceding the global financial crisis was characterized by a substantial widening of current account imbalances across the world. Since the onset of the crisis, these imbalances have contracted to a significant extent. In this paper, we analyze the ongoing process of external...

We examine the link between the net foreign asset position, the trade balance and the real exchange rate. In particular, we decompose the impact of a countryís net foreign asset position (ëexternal wealthí) on its long-run real exchange rate into two mechanisms: the relation between external...

The founders of the Bretton Woods System sixty years ago were primarily concerned with orderly exchange rate adjustment in a world economy that was characterized by widespread restrictions on international capital mobility. In contrast, the rapid pace of financial globalization during recent...

Although Europe in the aggregate is a not a major contributor to global current account imbalances, its trade and financial linkages with the rest of the world mean that it will still be affected by a shift in the current configuration of external deficits and surpluses. We assess the...

What determines the composition of external liabilities, both across countries and over time? More specifically, which countries account for the massive increase in equity-like liabilities (foreign direct investment and portfolio equity), especially since the mid 1990s? The empirical analysis...

The relationship between international payments and the real exchange rate¡Xthe "transfer problem"- is one of the classic questions in international economics. In this paper we use cross-country data on real exchange rates and a newly constructed data set on countries' net external positions to...

We construct estimates of external assets and liabilities for over 140 countries over the period 1970-2004. We describe our estimation methods and present some key features of the data, both at the country and at the global level. We focus in particular on trends in net and gross external...