This paper evaluates the effects of high-frequency uncertainty shocks on a set of lowfrequency macroeconomic variables that are representative of the U.S. economy. Rather than estimating models at the same common low-frequency, we use recently developed econometric models, which allows us to...

In this paper we extract latent factors from a large cross-section of commodity prices, including fuel and non-fuel commodities. We decompose each commodity price series into a global (or common) component, block-specific components and a purely idiosyncratic shock. We find that the bulk of the...

Global trade has been exceptionally weak over the past four years. While global trade grew at approximately twice the rate of GDP prior to the Great Recession, the ratio of global trade to GDP growth has declined to about unity since 2012. This paper assesses to what extent the change in the...

We assess the impact of China's bilateral political relations with three main trading partners—the US, Germany, and the UK—on current account balances and exchange rates, over the 1960Q1-2022Q4 period. Relying on the lag-augmented VAR approach with time-varying Granger causality tests, we...

This paper provides empirical evidence that there is no absolute convergence between the GDP per capita of the developing countries since 1950. Relying upon recent econometric methodologies (nonstationary long-memory models, wavelet models and time-varying factor representation models), we show...

We investigate the determinants of currency choice for trade invoicing in a cross-country context while focusing on the link between capital account liberalization and its impact on the use of the renminbi (RMB). We find that while countries with more developed financial markets tend to invoice...

Might the dollar eventually follow the precedent of the pound and cede its status as leading international reserve currency? Unlike the last time this question was prominently discussed, ten years ago, there now exists a credible competitor: the euro. This paper econometrically estimates...

Three current account imbalances - one very large deficit (the United States) and two surpluses (Japan and the Euro area) - are subjected to a minimalist structural interpretation. Though simple, this interpretation enables us to assess how much of each of the imbalances require a real exchange...

We characterize the relationship between ex post exchange rate depreciation and the interest differential for a set of countries that spans both developed and emerging market economies. Measured ex post uncovered interest differentials are then related to measures of trade and financial...