One of the most striking features of the world economy over the last twenty-five years has been the sharp decline in the real interest rate from approximately 4% in the early 1990s to -1.5% in 2013 (figure 1). During this period there have been two waves of large capital inflows into emerging economies ...

The increase in global imbalances in the last decade posed a theoretical challenge for international macroeconomics. Why did some less developed countries with a higher need for capital like China lend to richer countries? The inconsistency of standard dynamic open-economy models with actual global ...

At the heart of the debate on how the 2007–09 global financial crisis spread from the United States to the rest of the world lies the global banks. Using a large sample composed of advanced and emerging economies since the 1980s Abiad and others (2013) show that the effect of financial linkages on ...

Events in financial markets before and during the crisis of late 2008 have stimulated renewed interest in modeling trade with asymmetric information. Robert Shimer’s contribution to this volume joins the literature focusing on trade in securities that are claims on mortgages where issuers of the ...

Sudden stops are when capital inflows dry up abruptly. The banker’s aphorism—'It’s not speed that kills but the sudden stop'— has been popularly invoked since at least the Mexican crisis in 1994. Awareness then rose with impetus from the Argentine crisis (1995) the Asian crisis (1997) the Russian ...

The global financial crisis of 2008–09 led to massive interruptions in cross-border financial and trade flows. As a result of the crisis virtually all of the advanced economies and many emerging market countries experienced recessions over the past two years. These recessions coincided with various ...

The financial crisis that started in 2007 brought the global economy to the brink and in many respects it is still unfolding especially in Europe. How to understand and deal with the crisis has naturally been the subject of fierce debates that continue today. However some consensus appears to be ...

A characteristic of the current crisis in Europe is that countries in its periphery have found themselves increasingly cut off from international financial markets. In the present study we ask how such changes in the financial structure influence the welfare consequences of maintaining a fixed exchange ...

Are financial systems shock absorbers or shock amplifiers? Policymakers and academics have long remained divided over this fundamental question. On the one hand some contend that financial innovation and integration make the financial world a safer place (Greenspan 1999) others argue the opposite by ...

At least since the time of Irving Fisher economists as well as the general public have regarded the interest rate as the most important variable in the economy. But in times of crisis collateral rates (margins or leverage equivalently) are far more important. Despite the cries of newspapers to lower ...