Much ink has been spilled over the connections between capital account liberalization and growth. One reason that previous studies have been inconclusive, we show, is their failure to account for the impact of crises on growth and for the capacity of controls to limit those disruptive output...

The Marshall Plan is invoked whenever policy makers contemplate large-scale foreign aid. A cursory Google search turns up 'A Marshall Plan for Africa,' 'A Marshall Plan for Haiti," 'A Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe,' and 'A Marshall Plan for the East.' The foreign aid program officially known...

Notwithstanding concerns that the dollar's prospects as a reserve currency have been dimmed by the crisis, there has been no actual diminution of the dollar’s international role. The dollar will remain the principal form of international reserves for the foreseeable future

We analyze the impact of technology on production and trade in services, focusing on the foreign exchange market. We identify exogenous technological changes by the connection of countries to submarine fiber-optic cables used for electronic trading, but which were not laid for purposes related...

Previous studies have focused on when the renminbi will play a significant role as an international currency, but less attention has been paid to where. We fill this gap by contrasting two answers to the question. One is that the renminbi will assume the role of a global currency similar to the...

Productivity growth is slowing around the world. In 2014, according to the Conference Board's Total Economy Data Base, the growth of total factor productivity (TFP) hovered around zero for the third straight year, down from 1 per cent in 1996-2006 and ½ per cent in 2007-12. In this paper we...

IMF forecasts and the EU's Fiscal Compact foresee Europe's heavily indebted countries running primary budget surpluses of as much as 5 percent of GDP for as long as 10 years in order to maintain debt sustainability and bring their debt/GDP ratios down to the Compact's 60 percent target. We show...

This paper reconstructs the forgotten history of mutual assistance among Reserve Banks in the early years of the Federal Reserve System. We use data on accommodation operations by the 12 Reserve Banks between 1913 and 1960 which enabled them to mutualise their gold reserves in emergency...

We present new data documenting European capital issues in major financial centers from 1919 to 1932. Push factors (conditions in international capital markets) perform better than pull factors (conditions in the borrowing countries) in explaining the surge and reversal in capital flows. In...

We analyze patterns of bilateral financial investment using data on US investors' holdings of foreign bonds. We document a "history effect" in which the pattern of holdings seven decades ago continues to influence holdings today. 10 to 15% of the cross-country variation in US investors' foreign...