The effects of membership in the ERM are analyzed using vector autoregression techniques. The results indicate that while the ERM has had little effect on the nature of the shocks hitting the economies, it has had a significant effect on the response of member countries to these shocks, making...

This paper attempts to identify optimal and sustainable exchange rate regimes in a world economy comprising two countries. By developing a Barro-Gordon two-country macroeconomic model, noncooperative equilibria are obtained under different assumptions of monetary policy commitments and different...

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 often is linked to policies inconsistent with the constraint of the openeconomy trilemma-the inability of policymakers...

This paper analyzes the initial economic conditions before IMF financial arrangements are adopted. Evidence from 104 IMF arrangements in 74 developing countries during 1973-91 indicates that there are important differences between the characteristics of countries about to undergo a program and...

While the literature on external debt repayment performance by sovereign debtors is extensive, repayment performance vis-à-vis the International Monetary Fund has not been dealt with separately. Given differences between the IMF and other providers of financial resources, this paper considers...

To update a famous old statistic: a political leader in a developing country is almost twice as likely to lose office in the six months following a currency crash as otherwise. This difference, which is highly significant statistically, holds regardless of whether the devaluation takes place in...

Does macroeconomic data transparency-as signaled by subscription to the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS)-help reduce borrowing costs in international capital markets? This question is examined using data on new issues of sovereign foreign-currency-denominated (U.S. dollar, yen,...

Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the failed attempt by France, Israel, and the United Kingdom to retake it by force constituted a serious political crisis with significant economic consequences. For the United Kingdom, it engendered a financial crisis as well. That all four...

Does macroeconomic data transparency-as signaled by subscription to the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS)-help reduce borrowing costs in international capital markets? This question is examined using data on new issues of sovereign foreign-currency-denominated (U.S. dollar, yen,...