This paper considers the general equilibrium relationship between exchange rates and global imbalances. It emphasizes that the exchange rate is not a primitive but an equilibrium price determined by the policy mix. It uses extensions of the two-country Obstfeld-Rogoff model to analyze the...

Two types of currency crisis models coexist in the literature: first generation models view speculative attacks as being caused by economic fundamentals which are inconsistent with a given parity. Second generation models claim self-fulfilling speculation as the main source of a currency crisis....

During emerging market crises, domestic agents might have sufficient collateral to borrow from the other domestic agents, but they are unable to borrow from foreigners because the country, as a whole, lacks international collateral. In this setting, we show that an (ex-post) optimizing central...

This paper considers the general equilibrium relationship between exchange rates and global imbalances. It emphasizes that the exchange rate is not a primitive but an equilibrium price determined by the policy mix. It uses extensions of the two-country Obstfeld-Rogoff model to analyze the...

The Economist magazine has been publishing the Big Mac Index using it as a rule of thumb to determine the over- or under-valuation of international currencies based on the theory of Purchasing Power Parity since 1986. According to the theory, using the Big Mac as a tradable single-good basket,...

To what extent do national borders and national currencies impose costs that segment markets across countries? To answer this question the authors use a dataset with product-level retail prices and wholesale costs for a large grocery chain with stores in the United States and Canada. They...

How strong are strategic complementarities in price setting across firms? In this paper, we provide a direct empirical estimate of firm price responses to changes in prices of their competitors. We develop a general framework and an empirical identification strategy to estimate the elasticities...

In this paper we investigate how income growth rates in one country are affected by growth rates in partner countries, testing for the importance of pairwise country links as well as characteristics of the receiving country (trade and financial open- ness, exchange rate regime, fiscal...

Is there a J-curve for Azerbaijan? In answering this question, we are estimating a conventional trade model for Azerbaijan vis-à-vis its major trading partner—Europe. We are employing a Johansen approach to cointegration and error correction modeling. Our results suggest that a real...