The U.S. trade deficit was twice as large a percentage of U.S. GDP in 1989 as in 1979 although the value of the dollar and the level of U.S. demand relative to foreign demand were roughly comparable in both years. This article investigates the reasons for the deficit's magnitude in the late...

This paper estimates and explains the impact of U.S. sterilized intervention on exchange rate volatility. We find that U.S. intervention reduced both yen/dollar and DM/dollar exchange rate volatilities during 1985-86, but increased them during 1987-89. These results make sense in a noise trading...