We propose a "debt view" to explain the dominant international role of the dollar and provide broad empirical support for it. Within a simple capital structure model in which firms optimally choose the currency composition of their debt, we derive conditions under which all firms issue debt in a...

What determines sovereign risk? We study the London bond market from the 1870s to the 1930s. Our findings support conventional wisdom concerning the limited credibility of the interwar gold standard. Before 1914, gold standard adherence effectively signalled credibility and shaved 40 to 60 basis...

To estimate how monetary policy works in small open economies, we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that incorporates the basic features of these economies. We conclude that the monetary policy in a group of small open economies (including Australia, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and...

Fiscal deficits, elevated debt-to-GDP ratios, and high inflation rates suggest hyperinflation could have potentially emerged in many European countries after World War I. We demonstrate that economic policy uncertainty was instrumental in pushing a subset of European countries into...

The interwar period was marked by the end of the classical gold standard regime and new levels of macroeconomic disorder in the world economy. The interwar disorder is often linked to policies inconsistent with the constraint of the open-economy trilemma - the inability of policy-makers...

'New open economy macroeconomics' (NOEM) refers to a body of literature embracing a new theoretical framework for policy analysis in open economy, aiming to overcome the limitations of the Mundell-Fleming model while preserving the empirical wisdom and policy friendliness of traditional...