This paper shows empirically that China's trade balance is sensitive to fluctuations in the real effective exchange rate of the renminbi, although the size of the surplus is such that exchange rate policy alone will be unable to address the imbalance. One of the main reasons why the reduction in...

The purpose of this article is to assess how the changing operations of international banks in emerging countries in the last decades have altered the risks they face as well as their mitigation techniques. The recent expansion of the international banking business through the setup of branches...

This paper seeks to understand why Asian foreign investment is concentrated in financial markets outside of the region instead of in Asian markets. We analyse empirically the geographical composition of the cross-border portfolio holdings of more than 40 source countries. We compare these...

This paper analyzes empirically what explains the low profitability of Chinese banks for the period 1997-2004. We find that better capitalized banks tend to be more profitable. The same is true for banks with a relatively larger share of deposits and for more X-efficient banks. In addition, a...

In this paper we investigate whether cross-sectional information from local equity markets contained information on devaluation expectations during the Asian crisis. We concentrate on the information content of equity prices as these markets were in general the largest and most liquid at the...

Three important external determinants of sovereign spreads in emerging countries are reviewed: balance sheet effects, global risk aversion and contagion. While there are ways to reduce the detrimental impact of balance sheet effects, these are either hard to implement or costly. Insurance...

This paper reviews the existing evidence on the impact of foreign banks in the financial stability of the countries where they operate. Foreign banks seem to increase the stability of credit supply. Second, there is no evidence that foreign ownership increases the probability of a banking...

The empirical research we have conducted shows that the central bank design, in particular choosing a narrow central bank objective geared towards price stability, can help reduce the likelihood of a crisis. This is also the case for the independence of the central bank. This result is more in...

It is hardly surprising that one of the biggest and more dynamic economies of the world has a financial system with the same characteristics. The authors review its evolution focusing on its qualitative aspect and, specifically, in the reforms carried out to modernize the system. Recent reforms...

The paper uses the P-STAR model to analyze Spanish prices from 1970 to 1996, adding the foreign price gap to the standard domestic definition of the P-STAR model (the domestic price gap) to assess the role German price movements played in Spanish inflation. The domestic price gap turns out to be...