International Finance Overview

Principles

Definition

International finance is an academic field that investigates financial interactions, flows, markets, and institutions across national borders, encompassing topics such as exchange rates, international investment, and the financial management of multinational corporations within the global financial system.

Ontological type

Core Theories

Key Institutions

Exchange Rate Regimes

Key developments

Key Figures

Cross-Border Asset Pricing era

Kenneth Rogoff [1] is an influential economist whose career in this era includes positions at Harvard University [3] and the University of California, Berkeley [4]. His key contribution is the Empirical exchange rate models of the seventies paper [5], which formalized empirical testing of exchange-rate dynamics and helped anchor cross-border asset pricing research. Richard Meese [2] is an economist whose career in this era includes affiliations with the University of California, Berkeley [4]. Meese's key contribution centers on the Empirical exchange rate models of the seventies paper [5], which highlighted the limited predictive power of traditional models and spurred macro-finance approaches to international asset pricing.

Liberalization, FDI, and Crises era

Jong-Wha Lee [1], with affiliations at Cornell University [3] and Seoul National University [4] during this era, contributed to the scholarly understanding of liberalization and cross-border investment in international finance. His 1998 paper [7] on foreign direct investment and growth analyzes the link between FDI and growth, highlighting technology transfer and productivity spillovers as channels under liberalization and explaining why this mattered for crisis diagnostics and integration in the era. Paresh Kumar Narayan [2], affiliated with Monash University [5] and Deakin University [6] during this era, contributed to cross-country empirical work on financial liberalization and capital flows. His 2005 paper The saving and investment nexus for China: evidence from cointegration tests [8] offers empirical evidence on China's savings and investment dynamics and informs debates on capital mobility and financial development in the era.

Commodity-Centric Spillovers era

Dayong Zhang [1] is associated with China Pharmaceutical University [3] and China Agricultural University [4] during this era. His key contribution, exemplified by the 2020 paper Financial markets under the global pandemic of COVID-19 [7], lies in elucidating how global health shocks reshaped asset comovements and informed hedging and risk management in a pandemic-driven market regime. Lutz Kilian [2] is affiliated with Harvard University [5] and the University of California, Berkeley [6] in this era. His contribution, anchored by the 2009 paper The Impact of Oil Price Shocks on the U.S. Stock Market [8], helped establish the causal role of oil price movements in stock-market dynamics and underscored the importance of oil-market–equity spillovers for macro-financial linkages.