The major portion of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is accounted for by consumer spending, which significantly affects the business cycle. Consumer demand has been extremely volatile since 2000, especially given the booms and busts in housing values and in subprime mortgage lending. While it...

Gains from capital and credit market integration are important sources of mutual benefits that have been neglected in the discussion of the economics of Middle East peace. Such integration entails smoother income and consumption as a result of international diversification of investments. We...

The paper studies the role of small businesses (SME) in the transmission of the Eurozone crisis to member countries and whether regions or countries with many SMEs were less able to share risk. Our analysis draws attention to domestic bank dependence-defined as the share of domestic private...

This paper investigates whether risk sharing, measured as income and consumption smoothing, among countries in the EU and the European economic and monetary union (EMU) has increased since the adoption of the euro. We ask: Have the recent increase in foreign equity and debt holdings been...