We analyze the way in which Latin American countries have adjusted to commodityterms of trade (CTOT) shocks in the 1970-2007 period. Specifically, we investigate the degreeto which the active management of international reserves and exchange rates impacted thetransmission of international price...

A key challenge facing most emerging market economies today is how to simultaneouslymaintain monetary independence, exchange rate stability and financial integration subjectto the constraints imposed by the Trilemma, in an era of widespread globalization. In thispaper we overview and contrast...

We study the curious patterns of gold holding and trading by central banksduring 1979-2010. With the exception of several discrete step adjustments,central banks keep maintaining passive stocks of gold, independently of thepatterns of the real price of gold. We also observe the synchronization...

This paper investigates the factors explaining exchange market pressures (EMP) and thehoarding and use of international reserves (IR) by emerging markets during the 2000s, as the GreatModeration turned to the 2008-9 global crisis and great recession. According to our results, bothfinancial and...

As a share of GDP, the U.S. Federal debt held by the public exceeds 50 percent in FY2009, the highest debt ratio since 1955. Projections indicate the debt ratio may be in the 70- 100 percent range within ten years. In many respects, the temptation to inflate away some of this debt burden is...

We estimate the pricing of sovereign risk for sixty countries based on fiscal space (debt/tax;deficits/tax) and other economic fundamentals over 2005-10. We measure how accurately themodel predicts sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads, focusing in particular on the fivecountries in the...

The policy Trilemma (the ability to accomplish only two policy objectives out of financialintegration, exchange rate stability and monetary autonomy) remains a valid macroeconomicframework. The financial globalization during 1990s-2000s reduced the weighted average ofexchange rate stability and...

We investigate the relationship between economic growth and lagged internationalcapital flows, disaggregated into FDI, portfolio investment, equity investment, and shorttermdebt. We follow about 100 countries during 1990-2010 when emerging marketsbecame more integrated into the international...

In this paper we explore lessons from the global liquidity crisis pertaining to the prudential supervision role of central bank in an open economy. The narrow view of the role of central banks has been seriously challenged by the global liquidity crisis of 2008-9. The crisis validates central...

This paper examines how financial expansion and contraction cycles affect the broader economy throughtheir impact on eight real economic sectors in a panel of 28 countries over 1960-2005, paying particularattention to large, or sharp, contractions and magnifying and mitigating factors. We find...