Archive
The shock absorbing role of cross-border investments: net positions versus currency composition
Joint work with Beren Demirölmez and Martin Schmitz
Abstract: We present a comprehensive analysis of the shock absorption role of external positions using the currency exposures dataset by Bénétrix, Gautam, Juvenal, and Schmitz (2020). While the literature has frequently studied how the net international investment position and its currency composition determine the direction and scale of valuation effects, we focus on their amplitude. This is of central importance for global financial stability given the large and increasing scale of external balance sheets. To that end, we propose an indicator showing the extent to which external positions absorb or amplify exchange rate shocks. Analysing a set of 50 countries over the period 1990-2017, we find the external shock absorption role to be present for advanced economies, while this was initially not the case for emerging markets economies (EMEs). In recent years, however, EMEs’ external positions increasingly showed a shock absorption capacity. Our regression-based analysis reveals that the level of economic and financial development is associated with a greater capacity to absorb exchange rate shocks.
International Currency Exposures, Valuation Effects and the Global Financial Crisis
This is joint work with Philip Lane and Jay Shambaugh and published in the Journal of International Economics, 96: 98-109, January 2015
Abstract: We examine the evolution of international currency exposures, with a particular focus on the 2002–12 period. During the run up to the global financial crisis, there was a widespread shift towards positive net foreign currency positions, such that relatively few countries exhibited the archetypal emerging-market “short foreign currency” position on the eve of the global financial crisis. During the crisis, the upheaval in currency markets generated substantial currency-generated valuation effects — much of which were not reversed. There is some evidence that the distribution of valuation effects was stabilizing in the sense of showing a negative covariation pattern with pre-crisis net foreign asset positions.
The Anatomy of Large Valuation Episodes
Abstract: We examine cases in which there is a large shift in a country’s net foreign asset position due to the re-valuation of its foreign assets and/or foreign liabilities. We highlight the differences in large valuation shocks between countries characterized by large gross stocks of foreign assets and foreign liabilities and countries exhibiting large net external positions. Finally, we analyze macroeconomic dynamics in the neighborhood of large valuation episodes.
Paper published in Review of World Economics 145(3): 489-511, October 2009. It can be downloaded from here.
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Agustín Bénétrix 