This paper studies how portfolios with a global investment scope are allocated internationally using a unique micro dataset on U.S. equity mutual funds. While mutual funds have great flexibility to invest globally, they invest in a surprisingly limited number of stocks, around 100. The number of...

This paper studies the cross-country incidence of the 2008-2009 global crisis and documents a structural break in the way emerging economies responded to the global shock. Contrary to popular perceptions, emerging market economies suffered growth collapses comparable, or even larger, to those...

This paper analyzes the joint behavior of international capital flows by foreign and domestic agents -- gross capital flows -- over the business cycle and during financial crises. The authors show that gross capital flows are very large and volatile, especially relative to net capital flows....

Pension funds have been expected to invest in a wide range of securities and provide liquidity to domestic capital markets since they are the most sophisticated investors, with plenty of resources to gather private information and manage portfolios professionally. However, by analyzing unique,...

Emerging economies have tried to promote long-term debt because it reduces maturity mismatches and the probability of crises. This paper uses unique evidence from the leading case of Chile to study to what extent there is domestic demand for long-term instruments. The authors analyze monthly...

The preference among foreign institutional investors for large firms is widely documented. This paper deepens our understanding of international investments by providing evidence that foreign institutional investors with broader investment scopes prefer to invest in firms where they are less...

This paper examines the determinants of stock markets' vulnerability to the 2007-2008 crisis. Given that the United States (US) was the crisis epicenter, the authors analyze the factors driving the co-movement between US returns and stock returns in 83 countries. The analysis distinguishes...

The current account can be understood as the outcome of investment decisions made by domestic and foreign investors. These decisions can be decomposed into a portfolio rebalancing and a portfolio growth component. This paper provides empirical evidence of the importance of portfolio rebalancing...