This book makes concrete macroeconomic policy recommendations for Asian economies aimed at minimizing the impacts of an economic and financial downturn, and setting the stage for an early return to sustainable growth. The focus is on short-term measures related to the cycle. The three main areas...

This paper investigates how the trilemma policy mix affects economic performance in developing countries. We find that greater monetary independence can dampen output volatility, while greater exchange rate stability is associated with greater output volatility, which can be mitigated by reserve...

We consider the origins of global current account imbalances. We first discuss how the expansion of the US current account deficit and the decrease in global real interest rates can be reconciled with the widespread view that American expansionary fiscal policy is partly the source of current...

Using the "trilemma indexes" developed by Aizenman et al. (2010) that measure the extent of achievement in each of the three policy goals in the trilemma--monetary independence, exchange rate stability, and financial openness--we examine how policy configurations affect macroeconomic...

We examine whether the behavior of current account balances changed in the years preceding the global crisis of 2008-09, and assess the prospects for global imbalances in the post-crisis period. Changes in the budget balance are an important factor affecting current account balances for deficit...

Using the “trilemma indexes” developed by Aizenman et al. (2008) that measure the extent of achievement in each of the three policy goals in the trilemma—monetary independence, exchange rate stability, and financial openness—this paper examines how policy configurations affect...

Using data from more than 100 economies for the period of 1975 to 2005, we conduct an extensive empirical analysis of the determinants of international reserve holdings. Four groups of determinants, namely, traditional macro variables, financial variables, institutional variables, and dummy...

Japan’s more than a decade long “Great Recession†has presented a disconcerting case of what could happen if interest rates are bounded by zero and deflation sets in. Since Krugman (1998), the commonplace observation is that the deflationary situation combined with the zero...