While currency crises have been extensively studied, the opposite phenomenon, large appreciations, has been far less researched. We fill this gap by providing an empirical exploration of historical episodes of large real exchange rate appreciations, using a sample of 28 advanced and 25 emerging...

The launch of the euro has fed doubts concerning the constitution of an optimal European monetary zone. Indeed, the differences in legal, institutional and cultural frameworks… as well as the diversity of the productive and financial European systems may have led to the idea that Europe does...

In this note we summarize our recent paper, where we delved into the details of this apple-to-oranges problem with the aim of defining a minimum common ground. We begin our analysis by explicitly documenting the kinds of measures that are construed as capital controls. Along the way, we describe...

Aggregate and sector-level investment equations that incorporate the exchange rate are estimated for a panel of 17 OECD countries using an error correction methodology. A real currency depreciation is found to have a significant negative effect on aggregate investment in both the short run and...

Many people pay attention to media reports of the US stock market’s performance. Using a data-based thought experiment, we cast the market’s recent highs and lows in an unusually unattractive light. The result matters because the economic and political factors that make it relevant are...

Insufficiency of foreign exchange may at times constrain the growth of small open economies which lack the domestic resources to produce import substitutes for their consumption, investment and input needs. This study explores the foreign exchange constraint in three small open Caribbean...

The paper deals with changes in the competitiveness of 12 countries forming the euro area in 1999-2000. These changes are analyzed using various macroeconomic indicators (real exchange rate, trade ratios, labor market and economic output performance). Due to the different levels of development...

The classical case of comparative advantage is put into a new formal framework, that is, the behavioral axioms of standard economics are replaced by a set of structural axioms. This enables a comprehensive analysis that takes the effects on income and profit explicitly into account. The axioms...

This paper examines the behaviour of exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices in India after the reforms initiated in the early 1990s. Unlike observed in several countries, it finds a rise in exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices until recent years. Besides economic factors...

Starting in 2004 the Guyanese foreign exchange rate has been remarkably stable relative to earlier periods. This paper explores the reasons for the stability of the rate. First, the degree of concentration in the foreign exchange market has increased, thus making the task of moral suasion...