Corporate Diversification and the Cost of Debt

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This paper investigates whether corporate diversification by property type and by geography reduces the costs of debt capital. It employs...     

Joint dynamics of foreign exchange and stock markets in emerging Europe

This paper proposes an ideal specification for studying joint dynamics of emerging stock and foreign exchange markets, and applies it on European emerging markets where this interaction is of particular significance due to large external deficits. Results show that global developed and emerging stock market returns account for a large proportion of the (permanent) comovement between the stock index and currency value. The residual interaction after controlling for global indexes is small. The sign of the currency-stock market relationship is driven by dependence on foreign capital (predominantly positive for countries which are net receivers of foreign portfolio capital) and depth of the local stock market. Bank of Russia's intensive involvement in the currency market delays Ruble's response to global information. Emerging European currencies predict reversals in global equity indexes several months ahead.     

International students and labour market outcomes of US-born workers*

Do international students graduating from US colleges and universities affect labour market outcomes of similarly educated native-born workers? I address this question by exploiting a change in US visa policy that results in increases in the labour supply of master’s-level international students to the US labour market in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Estimates show that increases in their labour supply via temporary work permits in a certain field reduce employment of recently graduated native-born holders of a master’s degree but increase earnings of experienced native-born holders of a master’s degree in the same field. These findings support the hypothesis of substitution between skills of similarly educated immigrants and native-born individuals in the same age group and complementarity between skills of those in different age groups.