In this study we adopt the CAPM-based model of Bekaert and Harvey (1995) to compare the differences in the relative importance of two sources of systemic risk (world and Eurozone) on Government bond returns, in two groups of countries in EU-15. Results show that euro markets are less vulnerable to the influence of world risk factors, and more vulnerable to EMU risk factors. However, they are only partially integrated. For their part, the markets of the countries that decided to stay out of the Monetary Union present a higher vulnerability to external risk factors.

This study builds on the conceptual framework of vulnerable growth to examine how US financial shocks influence the conditional distribution of real credit growth across a diverse set of countries, a phenomenon we term vulnerable funding . We show that deteriorating US financial conditions are linked to a reduction in real credit growth abroad, with particularly pronounced effects at the lower quantiles of real credit growth abroad. This suggests that, in common with the episodes of vulnerable growth discussed in the extant literature, episodes of vulnerable funding are also triggered globally by financial weakness in the US. However, our analysis reveals significant variation in the impact of US financial shocks across the quantiles of credit growth in countries worldwide. Specifically, countries with lower credit-to-GDP ratios or with higher levels of US investment relative to their GDP exhibit greater real credit growth vulnerability.

We study the effects of FOMC announcements of federal funds target rate decisions on individual stock returns, volatilities and correlations at the intraday level. For all three characteristics we find that the stock market responds differently to positive and negative target rate surprises. First, the average response to positive surprises (that is, bad news for stocks) is larger. Second, in case of bad news the mere occurrence of a surprise matters most, whereas for good news its magnitude is more important. These new insights are possible due to the use of high-frequency intraday data.