East Asia is characterized by intricate production and distribution networks. Higher skilled workers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan produce sophisticated technology-intensive intermediate goods and capital goods and ship them to China and ASEAN for assembly by lower skilled workers and...

The U.S. trade deficit with China exceeded $200 billion in 2005. Many blame these imbalances on the value of the renminbi. This paper investigates how an appreciation of the RMB would affect the U.S. trade balance with China. Johansen MLE and dynamic OLS results indicate that the long run real...

In 2005 55% of China's exports were "processed exports" produced using intermediate goods that came from other countries. The lion's share of the volume of imports for processing and of the value-added of processed exports came from other East Asian countries. We investigate how a unilateral...

Financial derivatives have harmed or destroyed numerous financial firms, nonfinancial firms, and municipalities in 1994 and 1995. This paper discusses the dangers of derivatives and also their benefits. It then considers policies that will maintain the benefits while containing the risks. These...

The performance of the U.S. economy between 1994 and 1998 was so good that some pundits began to call for the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to depress economic activity and reduce asset prices. Using a combination of methods the author argues that slowing the economy to stabilize...

This paper documents the functioning of the market in trade protection. It uses a narrative approach to demonstrate that politicians respond to the demands of special interests by forcing open foreign markets and by closing domestic markets. In the process government officials violate property...

Financial economists have long debated whether monetary policy is neutral. This article addresses this question by examining how stock return data respond to monetary policy shocks. Monetary policy is measured by innovations in the federal funds rate and nonborrowed reserves, by narrative...

Many argue that the yuan needs to appreciate to rebalance the People's Republic of China's trade. However, empirical evidence on the effects of a CNY appreciation on the People's Republic of China's exports has been mixed for the largest category of exports, processed exports. Since much of the...

Enormous trade surpluses are problematic for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the rest of the world. They primarily stem from processing trade. This paper investigates how exchange rate changes would affect the PRC’s imports for processing and processed exports. The results...