This paper describes how Latin America and the Caribbean has been integrating financially with countries in the North and South since the 2000s. The paper shows that the region is increasingly more connected with the rest of the world, even relative to gross domestic product. The region's...

As usual in this series, Chapter 1 reviews the configuration of global risks and assesses the outstanding short term opportunities and challenges facing the LAC region. We document the significant slowdown in economic activity across the region, and explore the possibility of this being the...

We study the extent to which firms from China and India use capital markets to obtain financing and grow. Using a unique data set on domestic and international capital raising activity and performance, we find that the expansion of financial market activity since the 1990s has been much more...

Which firms issue equity and debt in domestic and international markets and what happens to their assets, sales, and number of employees? To answer these questions, we assemble a new dataset on firm-level capital raising activity during 1991-2011, which we match with firm attributes for 45,527...

In this paper we analyze the behavior of international portfolios in periods of financial turmoil, both theoretically and empirically. On the one hand, there is a view that during crises domestic investors purchase safe, foreign assets while foreign investors purchase domestic assets at...

En contraste con el pasado, muchos países emergentes enfrentaron la crisis financiera mundial de 2008-2009 con la credibilidad y capacidad requerida para conducir políticas contracíclicas. Ello les permitió enfrentar mejor la caída mundial y así comportarse de manera similar a países...

In contrast to the past, many emerging countries faced the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 with more solid financial positions and the required credibility and capacity to conduct countercyclical policies. This allowed them to better cope with the global downturn and thus behave more...

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. We show that gross capital flows are very large and volatile, especially relative to net capital flows. When foreigners...

This paper studies how portfolios with a global investment scope are actually 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...

While a number of crises in emerging markets generated widespread contagion in financial markets during the 1990s, more recent crises (notably, in Argentina) have been mostly contained within national borders. This has led some observers to wonder whether contagion might have become a feature of...