Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has one of the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize''s public finance to the occurrence of...

Some countries undergoing exchange-rate-based stabilization and financial liberalization in Latin America, Asia and elsewhere have faced large capital inflows since 1991. Many have tried to sterilize the reserve inflows. Calvo, Leiderman, and Reinhart argue essentially that sterilization is more...

Continental trade blocs are emerging in many parts of the world almost in tandem. If trade blocs are required to satisfy the McMillan criterion of not lowering trade volume with outside countries, they have to engage in a dramatic reduction of trade barriers against non-member countries. That...

Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize's public finance to the occurrence of hurricanes...

This paper presents new empirical evidencesuggesting that the net effect of trade openness on output volatility is stabilizing. The methodology employed seeks to correct for the likely endogeneity of trade in this setting using gravity estimates as instrumental variables. The results confirm...

Financial stability is an important policy objective, since crises are associated with large economic, social and political costs. This paper contributes to the discussion by providing new theoretical and empirical evidence on the causal connection between lack of exposure to commercial trade...

This paper estimates the impact of relative price volatility on sector-level investment allocation using a panel of 65 countries with data for 26 manufacturing industries over the period 1985-2003. Results indicate that volatility distorts efficient investment allocation in that investment is...