Following four years of relative stability at around $105 per barrel, oil prices have declined sharply since June 2014. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the sources of the recent decline in prices, and examines its macroeconomic, financial and policy implications. The recent drop...

There is much speculation regarding a “race for dominance†among financial centers in Asia, arising from the anticipated financial opening up of China. This frame of reference is, to an extent, a predilection that results from a traditional understanding of financial centers as...

We create a network of bilateral correlations of changes in sovereign bond yields and individual bank equity price changes since 2000. We extract some stylized facts from this network of asset price correlations and document the clear differences in asset price correlations between safe havens...

This paper assesses the implications of Chinese capital account liberalization for capital flows. Stylized facts from capital account liberalization in advanced and large emerging market economies illustrate that capital account liberalization has historically generated large gross capital in-...

This is on a highly topical issue and addresses a key policy issue for Europe—namely, reinforcing EMU institutional architecture along with the Banking Union. Some proposals have emerged in Europe, and it will be important to put out staff views on this issue. In that context, publication as...

Heightened uncertainty since the onset of the Great Recession has materially increased saving rates, contributing to lower consumption and GDP growth. Consistent with a model of precautionary savings in the face of uncertainty, the paper finds for a panel of advanced economies that greater labor...

The Euro and Economic Stability assesses the euro area’s merits as a shelter and the merits of euro assets as a safe haven and reviews the case for rapid euro adoption from a post-crisis view. Policymakers and economists provide relevant lessons from euro area divergences for future euro...

The two models of international trade with developed factor markets -- Heckscher-Ohlin and Specific Factors -- both suffer significant defects. For example, their predictions about the patterns of domestic production and international trade are for the most part either indeterminate or uselessly...

Money demand in dollarized economies often appears to be highly unstable, making it difficult to forecast and control inflation. In this paper, we show that a stable money demand function for Russia can be found for "effective broad money," which includes an estimate of foreign cash holdings....

Globalization operates not only by reducing domestic pressures on inflation but also by reducing the scope of domestic authorities to influence the pace of inflation. First, as markets are integrated, the common, cross-border sources of inflation increase, reducing the extent of...