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...

Using a variant of the Cagan (1956) model with rational expectations, this paper shows that expected stabilization can result in a budget deficit in excess of the maximum inflation tax. A cap on the deficit dampens inflation expectations and raises real balances, thus increasing the yield of the...

The theory of irreversible investment predicts that development of an oil field should take place when a unique 'price trigger' is passed. At the start of the 1990/91 Gulf War, however, oil prices promptly doubled, only to fall back to their previous level when peace returned six months later....

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...

A "disequilibrium" framework, which extends that of R. J. Barro and H. I. Grossman_(1971) and E. Malinvaud_(1977) to include overlapping generations and dynamics due to perfect foresight and t he accumulation of bonds and capital, is used to determine when a welfare-maximizing fiscal policy...

In a monetary overlapping generations model with an imperfectly competitive labor market in which output is below its full-employment level, it is shown that different backward-looking rules for forecasting inflation lead to different steady states, despite yielding no forecast errors in the...

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...

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...