Search Results
Working Paper
Growth and Welfare Gains from Financial Integration Under Model Uncertainty
We build a robustness (RB) version of the Obstfeld (1994) model to study the effects of financial integration on growth and welfare. Our model can account for the empirically observed heterogeneity in the relationship between growth and volatility for different countries. The calibrated model shows that financial integration leads to significantly larger gains in growth and welfare for advanced countries than developing countries, with some developing countries experiencing growth and welfare loss in financial integration. Our analytical solutions help uncover the key mechanisms by which this ...
Discussion Paper
No Good Deals—No Bad Models
The recent financial crisis has highlighted the significance of unhedgable, illiquid positions in complex securities for individual financial institutions and for the global financial system as a whole. Indeed, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision notes that "One of the key lessons of the crisis has been the need to strengthen the risk coverage of the capital framework. Failure to capture major on- and off-balance sheet risks, as well as derivative related exposures, was a key destabilizing factor during the crisis."
Discussion Paper
Choosing the Right Policy in Real Time (Why That’s Not Easy)
As an economist, you make policy recommendations at any point in time that depend on what model of the economy you have in mind and on your assessment of the state of the economy. One can see these points play out in the current discussion about the timing of interest rate liftoff and the speed of the subsequent renormalization. If you think nominal rigidities are not all that important, you are likely to conclude that accommodative policies won’t do much for growth but will generate inflation. Similarly, if you are convinced that the economy is already firing on all cylinders, you may see ...