Why are investors rushing to purchase US government securities when the US is the epicentre of the financial crisis? This column attributes the paradox to key emerging market economies’ exchange practices, which require reserves most often invested in US government securities. America’s...

Financial crises are historically associated with the “4 deadly D’s”: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues dragged down, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debt piles up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries, the...

This paper represents a neoclassical model that explains the observed empirical relationship between government spending and world commodity supplies and the real exchange rate and real commodity prices. It is shown that fiscal expansion and increasing world commodity supplies simultaneously...

These are the narrative individual country histories of exchange rate arrangements, 1946-2001 that underpin "The Modern History of Exchange Rate Arrangements: A Reinterpretation". The chronologies allow us to date dual or multiple exchange rate episodes, as well as to differentiate between...

This is the chartbook of individual country exchange rate histories and their experience with parallel markets, 1946-2001 that accompanies "The Modern History of Exchange Rate Arrangements: A Reinterpretation." We develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes. One key...

There are cases where the parallel (or secondary) exchange rate applies only to a few limited transactions. An example is the “switch pound” in the United Kingdom during September 1950 through April 1967. However, it is not unusual for dual or parallel markets (legal or otherwise) to account...

This paper summarizes “The Center and the Periphery: The Globalization of Financial Shocks," which presents a new approach to measure and understand systemic financial turbulences. We defined two measures of systemic disturbances: weak- and strong-form globalization and created the...

Many emerging market countries have suffered financial crises. One view blames soft pegs for these crises. Adherents to that view suggest that countries move to corner solutions--hard pegs or floating exchange rates. We analyze the behavior of exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates to...

Comment: What Nancy Marion does in this paper is to present a cohesive survey of three strands of literature: the theoretical literature on currency crises, banking crises, and the more recent papers that have attempted to link the two. It is the "twin crisis" literature, which focuses on...

Comment on: Suzanne Duryea, Gustavo Márquez, Carmen Pagés, and Stefano Scarpetta, who review evidence on labor market mobility in nine countries. Three countries come from Latin America, while the remainder are transition economies in Eastern Europe. The period of study ranges from as little...