This paper surveys recent research in open-economy macroeconomics, using questions raised by European economic and monetary unification to guide the topics discussed. A striking empirical regularity is the tendency for changes in the nominal exchange rate regime systematically to affect the...

In this paper we connect the events of the last twelve months, "The Panic of 2008" as it has been called, to the demand for international reserves. In previous work, we have shown that international reserve demand can be rationalized by a central bank's desire to backstop the broad money supply...

This paper develops a dynamic framework in which macroeconomic liberalization and stabilization measures of the type recently seen in Latin America can be studied. The model is sufficiently general to cover both polar cases of a closed capital account and free private capital mobility, so the...

This paper revises pre-World War II current account data for thirteen countries by treating gold flows on a consistent basis. The standard historical data sources often fail to distinguish between monetary gold exports, which are capital-account credits, and nonmonetary gold exports, which are...

What idiosyncratic consumption risks can countries trade away on international asset markets? This paper develops an empirical methodology for answering the question. The tests are based on the proposition that in an integrated world asset market with representative national agents, the ex post...

This paper surveys the evolution of international capital mobility since the late nineteenth century. We begin with an overview of empirical evidence on the fall and rise of integration in the global capital market. A discussion of institutional developments focuses on the use of capital...

The collapse of a fixed exchange rate is typically marked by a sudden balance-of-payments crisis in which"speculators" fleeing from the domestic currency acquire a large portion of the central bank's foreign exchange holdings.Faced with such an attack, the central bank often withdraws...

Until now, thinking on open economy macroeconomics has been largely schizophrenic. When it comes to analyzing exchange rate dynamics, an empirically-minded economist abandons modern current account models which, while theoretically coherent, fail to address the awkward reality of sticky nominal...

The rapid growth of international reserves---a development concentrated in the emerging markets---remains a puzzle. In this paper we suggest that a model based on financial stability and financial openness goes far toward explaining reserve holdings in the modern era of globalized capital...

This paper studies optimal fiscal policy in an economy where heterogeneous agents with uncertain lifetimes coexist. We show that some plausible social welfare functions lead to time-inconsistent optimal plans, and we suggest restrictions on social preferences that avoid the problem. The...