Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract Do oil shocks matter for exchange rates? This paper addresses this question based on data on real and nominal exchange rates as well as an exchange market pressure index for 44 advanced and emerging countries. We identify three structural shocks (oil supply, global demand, and oil specific demand) which raise the real oil price and analyse their effect on individual exchange rates. Contrary to the predictions of the theoretical literature, we find no evidence that exchange rates of oil exporters systematically appreciate against those of oil importers after shocks raising the real oil price. However, oil exporters experience significant appreciation pressures following an oil demand shock, which they tend to counter by accumulating foreign exchange reserves. Results for general commodity exporters are similar, showing minor differences compared with oil exporters. Terms of use: Documents in

Information on all of the papers published in the ECB Working Paper Series can be found on the ECB's website, http://www.ecb.europa. eu/pub/scientifi c/wps/date/html/index.en.html AcknowledgementsEuropean Central Bank, DG International and European Relations. The views expressed in this paper belong to the authors and are not necessarily shared by the ECB. We thank an anonymous referee and participants in a seminar at the ECB, in particular Marco Lombardi, Giovanni Lombardo and Roland Straub, and at the Workshop Coping with volatile oil and commodity prices: Policy challenges for the global economy and oil and commodity-exporting countries, in particular our discussant, Menzie Chinn, for useful comments and suggestions.

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In this paper, we address the question of whether cross-country differences in civic capital, notably interpersonal trust, have contributed to the build-up of macroeconomic imbalances over the last three decades. We analyse the link between a stylised index of economic imbalances (a combination of the government budget balance, the inflation rate and the current account balance) and interpersonal trust, alongside other measures of civic and cultural capital, obtained from value survey data for 65 advanced and emerging countries. For the whole set of countries, we find robust empirical evidence for a negative and significant relationship between trust and macroeconomic imbalances which may therefore partly reflect underlying heterogeneity in civic capital. Within the euro area, differences in trust exist although they are not particularly large from an international perspective. With the nexus between trust and macroeonomic imbalances being equally robust we can attribute one fifth of the variation in intra-euro area imbalances to differences in interpersonal trust. Euro area membership and EU fiscal rules do not appear to have weakened the link between the two variables.

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