In most African economies, both agricultural production and the terms- of-trade are highly uncertain. This paper re-examines the implications of such uncertainty for the optimal mix of production and trade under alternative assumptions about international capital flows. The ultimate objective is...

This paper reexamines the stationarity of the dollar-sterling real exchange rate using the two centuries of data analyzed in Lothian and Taylor (LT) (1996). We fit univariate time series models for the real exchange rate that dominate the stationary AR(1) specification chosen by LT and the...

This paper documents a new "stylized fact" regarding commodity prices using alternative datasets covering the period from 1880 to 1996: The volatility of real commodity prices, defined as nominal commodity prices deflated by the manufacturing unit value index, is higher under flexible-exchange...

This study provides an empirical analysis of the extent to which ongoing technological change has offset the effect of ongoing depletion on the cost of finding additional reserves of natural gas. In the process, we develop a new index of technological change for exploration and development (E&D)...

This note argues that many employees under-contribute to so-called flexible spending accounts. A simple rule-of-thumb is developed for making optimal contributions (for risk neutral employees): After-tax income net of (uncertain) medical expenditures will be maximized if you contribute to your...

This paper surveys the recent literature analysing fiscal deficit sustainability, most of which focuses on the U.S. and other industrial countries, in an attempt to assess its potential usefulness in the developing country context. Both the accounting approach and the present value constraint...

This paper compares the behavior of real interest rate differentials across the major countries under the Bretton Woods regime and the regime of floating exchanges that replaced it. The primary object is to investigate both the extent of market integration and its changes over time. For all...

Uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) is one of three key theoretical relations used in analytical work in both international finance and international monetary economics. The problem, however, is that UIP does not seem to hold up well empirically. In this paper, we argue that the failures of UIP...

In this paper we study the behavior of the real exchange rate of three North American currencies vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar: the Canadian dollar the Mexican peso, and the Panamanian Balboa. Our principal object is to design an experiment in which meaningful comparisons of behavior across regimes...