Government forecasts of GDP growth and budget balances are generally more over-optimistic than private sector forecasts. When official forecasts are especially optimistic relative to private forecasts ex ante, they are more likely also to be over-optimistic relative to realizations ex post. For...

We empirically characterize how China is internationalizing the Renminbi by selectively opening up its domestic bond market and propose a dynamic reputation model to understand China's internationalization strategy. While previously closed to foreign investors, China has recently allowed major...

We reassess the pattern of Euro Area financial integration adjusting for the role of “onshore offshore financial centers” (OOFCs) within the Euro Area. While the Euro Area records large levels of international investment both within and outside of the currency union, much of these flows are...

We introduce a framework for analyzing geopolitical and economic competition around the world. Geopolitical power arises from the ability to jointly exercise threats arising from separate economic activities. Being able to retaliate against a deviating country across multiple arenas, often...

Global firms finance themselves through foreign subsidiaries, often shell companies in tax havens, which obscures their true economic location in official statistics. We associate the universe of traded securities issued by firms in tax havens with their issuer’s ultimate parent and restate...

Do governments default on debt denominated in their own currency? We introduce a new measure of sovereign credit risk, the local currency credit spread, defined as the spread of local currency bonds over the synthetic local currency risk-free rate constructed using cross currency swaps. We find...