The COVID-19 pandemic and associated policy responses triggered a historically large wave of capital reallocation between markets and asset classes. Using high-frequency country-level data, this paper examines if and how the number of COVID cases, the stringency of the lockdown, and the fiscal...

Risk management has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past fifteen years, with most new methods having been designed for the concerns of large institutions operating in well-developed financial markets. This paper addresses a problem faced by smaller institutions operating in...

Purpose - Natural disasters may inflict significant damage upon international financial markets. The purpose of this study is to investigate if any contagion effect occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis. Design/methodology/approach...

The COVID-19 pandemic led many emerging market central banks to adopt, for the first time, unconventional policies in the form of asset purchase programs. In this study, we analyze the effects of these announcements on domestic financial markets using both event studies and local projections...

This paper examines key determinants of the distance between the sovereign's credit rating and the ratings of sub-sovereign foreign currency bonds, such as bond issuers' type, debt characteristics, and global and country's economic conditions. Using a comprehensive international bond-level...

High book-to-market stocks earn higher average returns than low book-to-market stocks. This result has been verified using stock returns from the U.S., developed, and emerging markets. Why B/M explains expected returns is still an open question. In this paper, we use stock returns representing...

We find that data transparency policy reforms, reflected in subscriptions to the IMF's Data Standards Initiatives (SDDS and GDDS), reduce the spreads of emerging market sovereign bonds. To overcome endogeneity issues regarding a country's decision to adopt such reforms, we first show that the...

Historically, elections in emerging markets are perceived as chaotic and volatile for investment performance. In this paper we explore the performance and volatility of equity and foreign exchange markets in emerging economies during election cycles. We evaluated returns and volatility four...

We provide empirical evidence that US financial stress shocks (US-FSSs) are an important driver for economic dynamics and fluctuations in emerging market economies (EMEs). Applying a structural vector autoregression, we analyze the international transmission of US-FSSs to eight EMEs using...