I use a consumption-based test to examine the importance of income constraints and the degree of capital mobility across the Nordic countries over the period 1968-96. In particular, I explore the effects of financial deregulation of the 1980s. The estimating equation is derived along the lines...

Differences in financial systems are often named as a prime candidate for the current state of global imbalances. This paper argues that the process of capital liberalization can explain a substantial fraction of the US net external liabilities. We present a simple two-country model with an...

This paper assesses the linkages between money, credit, house prices and economic activity in industrialised countries over the last three decades. The analysis is based on a fixed-effects panel VAR estimated using quarterly data for 17 industrialized countries spanning the period 1970-2006. The...

A growing body of literature indicates that competition increases bank soundness. Applying an industrial organization based approach to large data sets for European and U.S. banks, we offer new empirical evidence that efficiency plays a key role in the transmission from competition to soundness....

The aim of this paper is to study the main macroeconomic, financial and structural factors that shaped current account developments in Greece over the period from 1960 to 2007 and discuss these developments in relation to the issue of external sustainability. Concerns over Greece’s external...

Is it possible to return to the seemingly boring, but stable banking of the Glass-Steagall era without the securitization of financial products? This article tries to answer this question by first consulting a number of theoretical approaches to finance: neoclassical economics, modern finance...