This paper proposes a template for assessing whether or not a country's economic and financial characteristics make it an appropriate candidate for a pegged exchange rate regime. The template employs quantifiable measures of attributes - trade orientation, financial integration, economic...

This paper highlights the importance of the role of the domestic tax system in determining the economic consequences of an external debt overhang. A simple taxation scheme is specified and it is shown that a country can be on the quot;wrong sidequot; of its debt Laffer curve only if it is on the...

Using recent advances in the classification of exchange rate regimes, this paper finds no support for the popular bipolar view that countries will tend over time to move to the polar extremes of free float or rigid peg. Rather, intermediate regimes have shown remarkable durability. The analysis...

This paper assesses the performance of three types of commodity price forecasts--those based on judgment, those relying exclusively on historical price data, and those incorporating prices implied by commodity futures. For most of the 15 commodities in the sample, spot and futures prices appear...

While the quot;dependent economyquot; approach has been used extensively in theoretical work on developing countries, there is very little empirical analysis of it available in the literature. This paper specifies a dependent economy model which incorporates several developing-country features,...

Drawing on new data and advances in exchange rate regimes' classification, we find that countries appear to benefit by having increasingly flexible exchange rate systems as they become richer and more financially developed. For developing countries with little exposure to international capital...