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Report
The international transmission of monetary policy
This paper presents the novel results from an internationally coordinated project by the International Banking Research Network (IBRN) on the cross-border transmission of conventional and unconventional monetary policy through banks. Teams from seventeen countries use confidential micro-banking data for the years 2000 through 2015 to explore the international transmission of monetary policies of the United States, the euro area, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Two other studies use international data with different degrees of granularity. International spillovers into lending to the private ...
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 ...
Report
The Global Credit Cycle
We document a global credit cycle that generates predictable co-movement in corporate bond returns worldwide. Using a large panel of international corporate bonds, we construct a single factor as a nonlinear function of credit spreads, equity market volatility, and their interactions. The global credit factor explains up to 13 percent of in-sample and up to 8 percent of out-of-sample variation in bond-level three-month-ahead returns. Unlike broader measures of global financial conditions, the global credit factor simultaneously captures time-series return predictability and cross-sectional ...
Discussion Paper
The Global Credit Cycle in Corporate Bond Returns
The global corporate nonfinancial bond market is both a large investment asset class and a vital source of funding for nonfinancial firms. With $19 trillion outstanding at the end of 2024, a broad portfolio of corporate bonds would be expected to be well diversified. Yet, in 37 percent of months between 1998 and 2024, more than 80 percent of bonds in the ICE Global Bond Indices—a portfolio with over 10,000 constituents spanning diverse industries, credit ratings, and regions—moved in the same direction, suggesting a large degree of synchronization. In this post, we introduce the global ...
Working Paper
The Effect of the China Connect
We document the effect on Chinese firms of the Shanghai (Shenzhen)-Hong Kong Stock Connect. The Connect was an important capital account liberalization introduced in the mid-2010s. It created a channel for cross-border equity investments into a selected set of Chinese stocks while China's overall capital controls policy remained in place. Using a difference-in-difference approach, and with careful attention to sample selection issues, we find that mainland Chinese firm-level investment is negatively affected by contractionary U.S. monetary policy shocks and that firms in the Connect are more ...
Working Paper
The Global Financial Cycle and Capital Flows During the COVID-19 Pandemic
We estimate the heterogeneous effect of the global financial cycle on exchange rates and cross-border capital flows during the COVID-19 pandemic, using weekly exchange rate and portfolio flow data for a panel of 59 advanced and emerging market economies. We begin by estimating a global financial cycle (GFC) index at the weekly frequency with data through the end of 2021, and observe an outsized decline in the index over a period of just four weeks during February and March 2020. We then estimate the country-specific sensitivities of exchange rates and capital flows to fluctuations in the GFC. ...
Report
Uncertainty Shocks, Capital Flows, and International Risk Spillovers
Foreign investors’ changing appetite for risk-taking has been shown to be a key determinant of the global financial cycle. Such fluctuations in risk sentiment also correlate with the dynamics of uncovered interest parity (UIP) premia, capital flows, and exchange rates. To understand how these risk sentiment changes transmit across borders, we propose a two-country macroeconomic framework. Our model features cross-border holdings of risky assets by U.S. financial intermediaries that operate under financial frictions and act as global intermediaries in that they take on foreign asset risk. 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
A Theory of Net Capital Flows over the Global Financial Cycle
We develop a theory to account for changes in net capital flows of safe and risky assets over the global financial cycle. We show empirically that countries that have a net debt of safe assets experience a rise in net outflows of safe assets (reduced accumulation of safe debt) during a downturn in the global financial cycle. This is accomplished through a rise in total net outflows and a drop in net outflows of risky assets. We develop a multi-country portfolio choice model that can account for these facts. The theory relies on cross-country heterogeneity in the share of an investor's ...
Working Paper
To What Degree and through Which Channel Do Central Banks Other Than the Federal Reserve Cause Spillovers?
Spillovers play a crucial role in driving monetary policy around the world. The literature focuses predominantly on spillovers from the Federal Reserve. Less attention has been paid to spillovers from other central banks. I measure the degree to which 20 central banks cause spillovers. I show that central banks in medium- to high-income countries cause spillovers to medium- to long-term interest rates in similar countries through a bond-pricing channel. These effects are narrower than spillovers from the Federal Reserve, which also affect emerging markets, short-term interest rates, and other ...