An iconic model with high leverage and overvalued collateral assets is used to illustrate the amplification mechanism driving asset prices to 'overshoot' equilibrium when an asset bubble bursts - threatening widespread insolvency and what Richard Koo calls a 'balance sheet recession'. Besides...

Producing high technology output and supplying sophisticated services often involves costly investment in industry-specific skills. But the threat of poaching means that it is the individual 'stakeholder,' not the firm, who must bear the cost. The authors investigate various mechanisms for...

The authors formulate a stochastic rational-expectations model of exchange-rate determination in which there are random shocks to the process of sluggish price adjustment. They examine the effects of imposing limits upon the range of variation of both nominal and real exchange rates, and...

The view held by Keynes that there was a speculative appreciation of sterling prior to its return to the gold standard, has been challenged by Gregor Smith and Todd Smith, who argue that expectations of return must have weakened the currency. The authors demonstrate that the positive but...

Is sovereign borrowing so different from corporate debt that there is no need for bankruptcy-style procedures to protect debtors? With the waiver of immunity, sovereign debtors who already face severe disruption from short-term creditors grabbing their currency reserves are also exposed to...

When the risk premium in the US stock market fell substantially, Shiller (2000) attributed this to a bubble driven by psychological factors. An alternative explanation is that the observed risk premium may be reduced by one-sided intervention policy on the part of the Federal Reserve which leads...

In the first decade of its existence, the European Monetary System passed through three phases of realignments: full accommodation, partial accommodation, and zero accommodation of inflation differentials. But to what extent does the new freedom of capital movements rule out such gradual...

This paper develops a model where agents learn about the probability of devaluations in a fixed exchange rate regim e. The true probability of devaluation is assumed to be low (or zero) b ut agents are initially unsure about the government's intentions and st art with a high prior belief....

We study a model of sovereign debt crisis that combines problems of creditor co-ordination and debtor moral hazard. In the face of sovereign default, the need to give appropriate incentives to the debtor leads to excessive 'rollover failure' by creditors. We discuss how the incidence of crises...