A long empirical literature has examined the idea that, in the absence of hedging mechanisms, currency risk should have an adverse effect on the export volumes of risk averse exporters. But there are no clear conclusions from this literature, and the current consensus seems to be that there is...

The nature of the microeconomic frictions that transform sudden stops in output collapses is not only of academic interest, but also crucial for the correct design of policy responses to prevent and address these episodes and the lack of evidence on this regard is an important shortcoming. This...

Natural disasters could constitute a major shock to public finances and debt sustainability because of their impact on output and the need for reconstruction and relief expenses. This paper uses a panel vector autoregressive model to systematically estimate the impact of geological, climatic,...

This paper provides evidence of the presence and relevance of the credit chain propagation and amplification mechanism described by Kiyotaki and Moore (1997) by looking at its implications for the correlation of industries. In particular, it tests the hypothesis that an increase in the use of...

Pension funds have been expected to invest in a wide range of securities and provide liquidity to domestic capital markets since they are the most sophisticated investors, with plenty of resources to gather private information and manage portfolios professionally. However, by analyzing unique,...

New data are presented for a large number of countries on how frequently former high-ranking politicians become bank directors. Politician-banker connections at this level are relatively rare, but their frequency is robustly correlated with many important characteristics of banks and...