We examine the impact of financial development on the composition of household portfolios in Spain, the U.K. and the U.S., three countries whose financial systems underwent profound changes over the past two decades and for which relevant data exist for sufficiently long time periods. We find a...

Several theoretical models suggest that the mere announcement of entering a currency union in the future triggers instantaneous changes in exchange-rate volatility. First, this paper develops a Markov-switching framework by which, in fact, volatility regime-switching in foreign exchange rates...