International topics
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Sovereign Default and State-Contingent Debt
The Latin American debt crises in the 1980s and the Asian crisis in the late 1990s both provided impetus for reforming the framework for restructuring sovereign debt. In the late 1980s, the Brady plan established the importance of substantive debt relief in addressing some crises. -
The Financialization of Food?
Commodity-equity and cross-commodity return co-movements rose dramatically after the 2008 financial crisis. This development took place following what has been dubbed the “financialization” of commodity markets. -
Endogenous Trade Participation with Incomplete Exchange Rate Pass-Through
This paper investigates the implications of endogenous trade participation for international business cycles, trade flow dynamics and exchange rate pass-through when price adjustments are staggered across firms. -
Forecasting the Real Price of Oil in a Changing World: A Forecast Combination Approach
The U.S. Energy Information Administration regularly publishes short-term forecasts of the price of crude oil. -
Are Product Spreads Useful for Forecasting? An Empirical Evaluation of the Verleger Hypothesis
Notwithstanding a resurgence in research on out-of-sample forecasts of the price of oil in recent years, there is one important approach to forecasting the real price of oil which has not been studied systematically to date. -
A Blessing in Disguise: The Implications of High Global Oil Prices for the North American Market
We examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in North America. This production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil-recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable. -
Why Do Emerging Markets Liberalize Capital Outflow Controls? Fiscal versus Net Capital Flow Concerns
In this paper, we provide empirical evidence on the factors that motivated emerging economies to change their capital outflow controls in recent decades. Liberalization of capital outflow controls can allow emerging-market economies (EMEs) to reduce net capital inflow (NKI) pressures, but may cost their governments the fiscal revenues that external financial repression generates. -
Fire-Sale FDI or Business as Usual?
Using a new data set, we examine the characteristics and dynamics of cross-border mergers and acquisitions during emerging-market financial crises, that is, so-called “fire-sale FDI.” Our findings shed fresh light on whether the transactions undertaken during crisis periods differ in fundamental ways from those undertaken during more tranquil periods. -
What Central Bankers Need to Know about Forecasting Oil Prices
Forecasts of the quarterly real price of oil are routinely used by international organizations and central banks worldwide in assessing the global and domestic economic outlook, yet little is known about how best to generate such forecasts. Our analysis breaks new ground in several dimensions.