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Journal Article
An international perspective on the recent behavior of inflation
Several commentators have been concerned about the possibility that the euro area may be experiencing disinflation with the risk of deflation. However, the euro area is not the only economy navigating the risky waters of low inflation. Several other advanced economies have recently experienced below-target inflation as well as some actual deflation. In this article, the authors collect data for nine advanced economies and document several facts about the behavior of inflation during the 2002-14 period. First, they show that the relationship between inflation rates and short-term rates ...
Journal Article
Commercial bank lending data during the crisis: handle with care
Caution is necessary when making inferences based solely on aggregate loans data.
Journal Article
An application of conventional sovereign debt sustainability analysis to the current debt crises
The developing international debt crisis has unleashed unanticipated fears that governments in some advanced economies may default on their sovereign debt and trigger a global financial tsunami. This article provides a primer on sovereign debt sustainability and interprets the recent experience of advanced economies in the light of a uniform approach that allows an answer to this question: What are the main factors that contribute to make a country?s debt sustainable or unsustainable?
Working Paper
The cyclical properties of disaggregated capital flows
We describe the second-moment properties of the components of international capital flows and their relationship (covariance and correlation) to business cycle variables of 22 emerging and OECD countries. Disaggregated flows have different volatility properties, with debt being the most volatile and FDI the least volatile. We show that (a) inward flows are procyclical, outward and net outward flows are countercyclical for most industrial and emerging countries while, for the G-7, both inward and outward flows are procyclical and net outflows are countercyclical; (b) inward FDI flows are ...
Working Paper
Do European capital flows comove?
We study the cross-sectional correlations of net, total, and disaggregated capital flows for the major source and recipient European Union countries. We seek evidence of changes in these correlations since the introduction of the euro to understand whether the European Union can be considered a unique entity with regard to its international capital flows. We first use Ng's (2006) "uniform spacing" methodology to rank cross-sectional correlations (i.e., which flows comove more) and to shed light on potential common factors driving international equity flows. We find that a common factor ...
Working Paper
U.S. commercial bank lending through 2008:Q4: new evidence from gross credit flows
How have U.S. commercial banks responded during the current financial crisis? What was hiding behind the dynamics of aggregate commercial bank loans through the end of 2008? We use balance sheet data for the entire population of commercial banks to construct quarterly gross credit flows (credit expansion and credit contraction series) for the U.S. banking system during the period 1999:Q1-2008:Q4 and provide new evidence on changes in lending. We show that credit expansion, as defined in this paper, began declining during the first half of 2008 while credit contraction began steeply increasing ...
Working Paper
Changes in the second-moment properties of disaggregated capital flows
Using formal statistical tests, we detect (i) significant volatility increases for various types of capital flows for a period of changes in business cycle comovement among the G7 countries, and (ii) mixed evidence of changes in covariances and correlations with a set of macroeconomic variables.
Working Paper
The (non-)resiliency of foreign direct investment in the United States during the 2007-2009 financial crisis
We study the contraction of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows in the United States during the recent financial crisis and show their unusual non-resiliency, which depends in part on the global nature of the economic recession, but also on the increases in the cost of financing FDI in the economies in which the flows originate. To formally study the effects of external financial conditions on FDI in the United States, we exploit the three dimensions of a panel of U.S. inward FDI flows organized by recipient U.S. industries, source countries, and years for the recorded flows. Changes in the ...
Working Paper
International trade, female labor, and entrepreneurship in MENA countries
Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries stand out in international comparisons of de jure obstacles to female employment and entrepreneurship. These obstacles are mirrored in low female labor rate participation and low entrepreneurship and ownership rates. Recent research suggests a connection between international trade and female labor participation. In this article, the authors focus on the relationship between international trade and gender in the MENA countries first analyzing female labor as a production factor, and then focusing on female entrepreneurship and firm ownership. ...