The European Sovereign Debt Crisis Lane, Philip R.
The Journal of economic perspectives,
07/2012, Letnik:
26, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The origin and propagation of the European sovereign debt crisis can be attributed to the flawed original design of the euro. In particular, there was an incomplete understanding of the fragility of ...a monetary union under crisis conditions, especially in the absence of banking union and other European-level buffer mechanisms. Moreover, the inherent messiness involved in proposing and implementing incremental multicountry crisis management responses on the fly has been an important destabilizing factor throughout the crisis. After diagnosing the situation, we consider reforms that might improve the resilience of the euro area to future fiscal shocks. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
This paper documents the evolution of international financial integration since the global financial crisis using an updated dataset on external assets and liabilities, covering 212 economies for the ...period 1970–2015. It finds that the growth in cross-border positions in relation to world GDP has come to a halt. This reflects much weaker capital flows to and from advanced economies, with diminished cross-border banking activity, and an increase in the weight of emerging economies in global GDP, as these economies have lower external assets and liabilities than advanced economies. Cross-border FDI positions have continued to expand, unlike positions in portfolio instruments and other investment. This expansion reflects primarily positions vis-à-vis financial centers, suggesting that the complexity of the corporate structure of large multinational corporations is playing an important role. The paper also explores the cross-country drivers of foreign ownership of domestic debt securities, highlighting in particular the role of the euro debt crisis in explaining its evolution.
During the pre-crisis period, Europe experienced substantial cross-country variation in domestic credit growth and cross-border capital flows. We investigate the inter-relations between domestic ...credit growth and international capital flows during the period 1993-2008, with a special focus on the boom period of 2003-2008. We establish that domestic credit growth in European countries is strongly related to net debt inflows but not to net equity inflows. This pattern also holds for an extended sample of 54 advanced and emerging economies.
The Resilience of the Euro Lane, Philip R.
The Journal of economic perspectives,
04/2021, Letnik:
35, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Over 2014–2019, the euro area charted a substantial post-crisis economic recovery while also reducing macro-financial vulnerabilities. The array of post-crisis institutional reforms has improved the ...capacity of the euro area to withstand adverse shocks, even if the narrowing of imbalances also came at a high cost (especially in the most indebted member countries). The pandemic has provided a new test: the combination of a common central bank and the enlargement of the common fiscal capacity has provided substantial policy support and fostered a narrowing in risk premia, despite significant differences in levels of public debt and exposures to the pandemic shock. While the resilience of the euro is sure to be tested further in the coming years, the extent of the underlying political backing for the common currency should not be underestimated.
We construct estimates of external assets and liabilities for 145 countries for 1970–2004. We describe our estimation methods and key features of the data at the country and global level. We focus on ...trends in net and gross external positions, and the composition of international portfolios. We document the increasing importance of equity financing and the improvement in the external position for emerging markets, and the differing pace of financial integration between advanced and developing economies. We also show the existence of a global discrepancy between estimated foreign assets and liabilities, and identify the asset categories accounting for this discrepancy.
In order to gain a better empirical understanding of the international financial implications of currency movements, we construct a database of international currency exposures for a large panel of ...countries over 1990-2004. We show that trade-weighted exchange rate indices are insufficient to understand the financial impact of currency movements and that our currency measures have high explanatory power for the valuation term in net foreign asset dynamics. Exchange rate valuation shocks are sizable, not quickly reversed, and may entail substantial wealth redistributions. Further, we show that many developing countries have substantially reduced their negative foreign currency positions over the last decade. (F31, F32, G15)
Sleep is an essential human function but its regulation is poorly understood. Using accelerometer data from 85,670 UK Biobank participants, we perform a genome-wide association study of 8 derived ...sleep traits representing sleep quality, quantity and timing, and validate our findings in 5,819 individuals. We identify 47 genetic associations at P < 5 × 10
, of which 20 reach a stricter threshold of P < 8 × 10
. These include 26 novel associations with measures of sleep quality and 10 with nocturnal sleep duration. The majority of identified variants associate with a single sleep trait, except for variants previously associated with restless legs syndrome. For sleep duration we identify a missense variant (p.Tyr727Cys) in PDE11A as the likely causal variant. As a group, sleep quality loci are enriched for serotonin processing genes. Although accelerometer-derived measures of sleep are imperfect and may be affected by restless legs syndrome, these findings provide new biological insights into sleep compared to previous efforts based on self-report sleep measures.
External adjustment and the global crisis Lane, Philip R.; Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria
Journal of international economics,
November 2012, 2012-11-00, 20121101, Letnik:
88, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The period preceding the global financial crisis was characterized by a substantial widening of current account imbalances across the world. Since the onset of the crisis, these imbalances have ...contracted to a significant extent. In this paper, we analyze the ongoing process of external adjustment in advanced economies and emerging markets. We find that countries whose pre-crisis current account balances were in excess of what could be explained by standard economic fundamentals have experienced the largest contractions in their external balance. We subsequently examine the contributions of real exchange rates, domestic demand and domestic output to the adjustment process (allowing for differences across exchange rate regimes) and find that external adjustment in deficit countries was achieved primarily through demand compression, rather than expenditure switching. Finally, we show that changes in other investment flows were the main channel of financial account adjustment, with official external assistance and ECB liquidity cushioning the exit of private capital flows for some countries.
► We examine the contraction in current account balances over 2008–2010. ► We find that high-deficit countries mainly adjusted through "expenditure reduction". ► For peggers, real exchange rates moved in the wrong direction. ► Large output losses for high-deficit countries underline risks of excessive deficits. ► Official capital inflows have cushioned private capital outflows, especially in the euro area.
We examine whether the cross-country incidence and severity of the 2008-09 global recession is systematically related to precrisis macroeconomic and financial factors. We find that the precrisis ...level of development, increases in the ratio of private credit to GDP, current account deficits, and openness to trade are helpful in understanding the intensity of the crisis. International risk sharing did little to shield domestic demand from the country-specific component of output declines, while those countries with large pre-crisis current account deficits saw domestic demand fall by much more than domestic output during the crisis.
Being a morning person is a behavioural indicator of a person's underlying circadian rhythm. Using genome-wide data from 697,828 UK Biobank and 23andMe participants we increase the number of genetic ...loci associated with being a morning person from 24 to 351. Using data from 85,760 individuals with activity-monitor derived measures of sleep timing we find that the chronotype loci associate with sleep timing: the mean sleep timing of the 5% of individuals carrying the most morningness alleles is 25 min earlier than the 5% carrying the fewest. The loci are enriched for genes involved in circadian regulation, cAMP, glutamate and insulin signalling pathways, and those expressed in the retina, hindbrain, hypothalamus, and pituitary. Using Mendelian Randomisation, we show that being a morning person is causally associated with better mental health but does not affect BMI or risk of Type 2 diabetes. This study offers insights into circadian biology and its links to disease in humans.
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