Identification of structural VARs using sign restrictions has become increasingly popular in the academic literature. This paper (i) argues that identification of shocks can benefit from introducing a global dimension, and (ii) shows that summarising information by the median of the available...

<heading id="h1" level="1" format="display" implicit="no">Abstract</heading> Since the mid-1990s and prior to the financial crisis external balances of systemically important economies widened significantly. This paper takes a long-run perspective and reviews the main determinants of widening global imbalances. To this aim, we first provide a set of newly...

Capital flows into the euro area were particularly large in the mid-2000s and the share of foreign holdings of euro area securities increased substantially between the introduction of the euro and the outbreak of the global financial crisis. We show that the increase in foreign holdings of euro...

This paper describes in detail the methodology currently used by the European Central Bank (ECB) to determine the nominal and real effective exchange rate indices of the euro. Building on the work of Buldorini et al. (2002), it shows how the ECB’s techniques for calculating effective exchange...

This paper describes in detail the methodology currently used by the European Central Bank (ECB) to determine the nominal and real effective exchange rate indices of the euro. Building on the work of Buldorini et al. (2002), it shows how the ECB’s techniques for calculating effective exchange...

This paper argues that global perspective can help us with the identification of structural shocks by utilizing the information on the signs of the responses of individual countries (cross section units). We demonstrate the main idea by means of Monte Carlo experiments and present an empirical...

Since the late-1990s, the global economy is characterised by historically low risk premia and an unprecedented widening of external imbalances. This paper explores to what extent these two global trends can be understood as a reaction to three structural shocks in different regions of the global...

Identification of structural VARs using sign restrictions has become increasingly popular in the academic literature. This paper (i) argues that identification of shocks can benefit from introducing a global dimension, and (ii) shows that summarising information by the median of the available...

Capital flows into the euro area were particularly large in the mid-2000s and the share of foreign holdings of euro area securities increased substantially between the introduction of the euro and the outbreak of the global financial crisis. We show that the increase in foreign holdings of euro...

In this paper, we take a systematic look at global imbalances. First, we provide a definition of the phenomenon, and relate global imbalances to widening external positions of systemically important economies that reflect distortions or entail risks for the global economy. Second, we provide an...