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Working Paper
The US, Economic News, and the Global Financial Cycle
We provide evidence for a causal link between the US economy and the global financial cycle. Using intraday data, we show that US macroeconomic news releases have large and significant effects on global risky asset prices. Stock price indexes of 27 countries, the VIX, and commodity prices all jump instantaneously upon news releases. The responses of stock indexes co-move across countries and are large - often comparable in size to the response of the S&P 500. Further, US macroeconomic news explains on average 23 percent of the quarterly variation in foreign stock markets. The joint behavior ...
Working Paper
The Transmission of International Monetary Policy Shocks on Firms' Expectations
Motivated by the dominant role of the US dollar, we explore how monetary policy (MP) shocks in the US can affect a small open economy through the expectation channel. We combine data from a panel survey of firms' expectations in Uruguay with granular information about firms' debt position and total imports on a monthly basis. We show that a contractionary MP shock in the US reduces firms' inflation and cost expectations in Uruguay. This result contrasts with the inflationary effect of this shock on the Uruguayan economy, suggesting uncertainty about the policy regime. We discuss the issues ...
Working Paper
A Theory of the Global Financial Cycle
We develop a theory to account for changes in prices of risky and safe assets and gross and net capital flows over the global financial cycle (GFC). The multi-country model features global risk-aversion shocks and heterogeneity of investors both within and across countries. Within-country heterogeneity is needed to account for the drop in gross capital flows during a negative GFC shock (higher global risk-aversion). Cross-country heterogeneity is needed to account for the differential vulnerability of countries to a negative GFC shock. The key vulnerability is associated with leverage. In ...
Working Paper
A Theory of Gross and Net Capital Flows over the Global Financial Cycle
We develop a theory to account for changes in gross and net capital flows over the global financial cycle (GFC). The theory relies critically on portfolio heterogeneity among investors within and across countries, related to risky portfolio shares and portfolio shares allocated to foreign assets. A global drop in risky asset prices during a downturn of the GFC changes relative wealth within and across countries due to portfolio heterogeneity. This leads to changes in gross and net capital flows that are consistent with the stylized facts: all countries experience a decline in gross capital ...
Working Paper
What Happens in China Does Not Stay in China
Spillovers from China to global financial markets have been found to be small owing to China's limited integration in the global financial system. In this paper, however, we provide evidence that China constitutes an important driver of the global financial cycle. We argue that because of China's importance for global consumption, stronger Chinese growth raises global growth prospects, inducing an increase in global risk sentiment and an expansion in global asset prices and global credit. Two contributions are key to this finding: (1) We construct a measure of China's credit impulse to ...