An index developed by the authors is used to track the U.S. dollar's performance against a number of foreign currencies. The authors' comparison of the index with the relative export growth rates of Japan and Germany suggests that in the 1990s the dollar stayed near levels that put the United...

Despite an appreciating yen, Japanese firms have managed to maintain strong export sales growth during the first half of the 1990s. Their strategies? Cutting the yen price of exports and shifting production to higher-value merchandise.

Many central banks-particularly those in Japan and the emerging Asian nations-have been building up their holdings of foreign currency assets. These holdings, known as foreign exchange reserves, may help countries stabilize their currencies, but they can also lead to investment losses for the...

Despite heavy borrowing in recent years, the United States has financed its large current account deficits without experiencing an unusual buildup in foreign investors' holdings of U.S. assets. A new analysis suggests that this somewhat surprising development is attributable largely to rapid...

Trade liberalization has had little effect on the use of antidumping tariffs - tariffs imposed on imports judged by a government to be unfairly priced. As more countries resort to such tariffs, questions arise about the merits of this form of trade protection, particularly when other remedies...

In recent years, oil-exporting countries have experienced windfall gains with the rise in the price of oil. A look at how oil exporters "recycle" their revenues reveals that roughly half of the petrodollar windfall has gone to purchase foreign goods, especially from Europe and China, while the...

Over the past decade, the United States has gone from enjoying a small trade surplus with China to grappling with an enormous deficit. Just to keep the gap from expanding in 1997, U.S. exports to China would need to grow at an extraordinary rate--four times as fast as Chinese exports to the...

Over the next thirty years, the percentage of people who are 65 and over will grow rapidly while the percentage of people in their working years will decline. This shift in the age distribution of the population will put enormous pressure on social security systems in the United States, Germany,...

Although the United States has seen its net liabilities surge in recent years, its investment income balance has remained positive-largely because U.S. firms operating abroad earn a higher rate of return than do foreign firms operating here. The continuing buildup in liabilities, however, should...

With the 1998 current account deficit approaching $225 billion, attention is again focusing on the deficit's impact on U.S. jobs. Although a high deficit does adversely affect employment in export- and import-competing industries, it also means that considerable foreign capital is flowing into...