This paper develops a simple but general methodology to estimate the expected intertemporal marginal rate of substitution or quot;EMRSquot;, using only data on asset prices and returns. Our empirical strategy is general, and allows the EMRS to vary arbitrarily over time. A novel feature of our...

Observers have often characterized asset markets as being subject to periods of tranquility and periods of turbulence. Until recently, however, researchers were unable to produce closed-form asset pricing formulas in a model environment of time-varying risk. Some work by Abel provided us with...

Evidence of excess volatilities of asset prices compared with those of market fundamentals is often attributed to speculative bubbles. This study examines the sense in which speculative bubbles could in theory lead to excess volatility, hut it demonstrates that some of the variance hounds...

In the context of a flexible-price monetary exchange rate model and the assumption of uncovered interest parity, we obtain a measure of the fundamental determinant of exchange rates. Daily data for the European Monetary System are used to explore the importance of non-linearities in the...

In this paper we generalize the target zone exchange rate as model formalized by Krugman (1988b). The main contributions of these pages consist of linking the recent developments in the theory of target zones to the mirror image theory of speculative attacks on asset price fixing regimes and in...

We use a simple model of international lending to show that an emerging market borrower who might default can be shut out of international capital markets without warning. A modest haircut on obligations, for example, can shut down lending

This paper reviews recent developments in the theoretical and empirical analysis of balance-of-payments crises. A simple analytical model highlighting the process leading to such crises is first developed. The basic framework is then extended to deal with a variety of issues, such as:...

Traditionally the choice of exchange rate regime has been seen as a second-best policy choice, which can be directed toward mitigating the distortionary effects of price or information rigidities. In this paradigm the optimal degree of exchange rate flexibility is found to depend of the source...

The paper considers the merits of rules and discretion for monetary policy when the structure of the macroeconomic model and the probability distributions of disturbances are not well defined. It is argued that when it is costly to delay policy reactions to seldom-experienced shocks until formal...