Essays in Macro-Finance

This thesis consists of three papers on global finance and international asset pricing. The first paper develops a structural asset-pricing model in which a countrys equity risk exposure depends on a world-volatility shock, a local-growth shock, and a time-varying trade-network centrality measure that scales exposure to global risk. The model ratio- nalizes why USD betas rise with centrality in developed markets but decline or remain flat in emerging markets, and why local-currency betas in EMs fail to increase de- spite deeper trade integration. The second paper builds a five-decade panel of stock market returns for 37 developed and developing countries and documents that poorer countries have both higher and more volatile returns. It shows that these facts are con- sistent with a consumption-based long-run risk model, which predicts that countries with more growth-sensitive dividends earn higher risk premia. The third paper investi- gates whether the U.S. dollars global dominance is eroding. Using new data on reserve composition, FX transactions, global debt issuance, and trade invoicing, it finds little evidence of de-dollarization: U.S. dollar dominance remains stable through late 2023 despite geopolitical and macroeconomic shocks. Together, the three chapters provide new theoretical and empirical insights into global equity risk, long-run return behavior, and the resilience of the dollar-based international monetary system.