I was at a conference — actually two — in Singapore: the Asian Bureau for Finance and Economic Research annual conference, and the Asian Monetary Policy Forum. In the first, I attended a talk by Steven Davis (Hoover), on “Measuring Policy Uncertainty, Assessing its Consequences”. One slide pretty much summed up my feelings about these times…

The discussion really focused on new research, regarding jumps in equity prices and their determinants.

In the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, Adam Posen (Peterson IIE) kicked off the day’s presentations, noting the fragmentation into blocs would end up dissipating the benefits we enjoyed in the wake of the fall of the Soviet empire.

Pierre Olivier Gourinchas (IMF Research) provided insights into ongoing work on … geopolitical fragmentation of the global economy. This shot shows the divergence between trade and finance networks.

Apologies for the poor photography (Good thing I aimed for a career in economics…).

All of the proceedings were fascinating, including the commissioned paper by Helene Rey and Vania Stavrakeva (both LBS), entitled “Interpreting Turbulent Episodes in International Finance”. Olivier Jeanne (JHU) and I got to discuss. The paper’s embargoed, but I think I can share one graph I thought particularly interesting.

Source: Rey and Stavrakeva (2025).

The value of cross-border holdings of equities now exceeds that of bonds (of all types). Hence, in thinking about determinants of exchange rates, it seems to me less plausible to rely only on bond yields as key factors.