As of the last working day of the year 2022 (30th December 2022), the official exchange rate against the US dollar (USD) was 448, while the naira USD exchange rate at the black market traded at 748—a premium of 300. The dollar had already peaked above 800 on the black market during the year...

Economists generally assert that countries sacrifice monetary independence when they peg their exchange rates. At the same time, central bankers frequently assert that pegging an exchange rate does not eliminate the independence of monetary policy. This paper examines the effects of money-supply...

This paper studies the merits of policy rules with escape clauses, analyzing as an example fixed exchange-rate systems that allow member countries the freedom to realign in periods of stress. Motivating this example is the debate within the European Monetary System over how quickly to move from...

Fixed and flexible exchange rates each have advantages, and a country has the right to choose the regime suited to its circumstances. Nevertheless, several arguments support the view that the de facto dollar peg may now have outlived its usefulness for China. (1) China's economy is on the...

The paper updates the answer to the question: what precisely is the exchange rate regime that China has put into place since 2005, when it announced a move away from the dollar peg? Is it a basket anchor with the possibility of cumulatable daily appreciations, as was announced at the time? We...

The choice of an exchange rate peg often points to a trade-off between gaining credibility and losing flexibility. We show that the flexibility loss may be reduced if domestic and foreign shocks are coorelated and more volatile. Allowing for a plausible structural change after a peg, a...

The purpose of this paper is to document the relation, in post-war Lebanon from 1991 till 2013, between the central bank¡¯s foreign exchange reserves and the monetary base, and the relation between these two variables and the broad money supply in domestic currency (M2). The setting is typical...

This paper describes and analyzes the implementation of a crawling exchange rate band on an electronic trading platform. The placement of limit orders at the central bank's target rate serves as a credible policy statement that may coordinate beliefs of market participants. We find for our...

The accelerated expansion of China’s trade and current account surpluses since 2004, and the associated expansion of China’s foreign exchange reserves in the context of very rapid investment-driven domestic economic growth and adverse movements in China’s terms of trade have led China’s...

Although natural market forces should resolve such imbalances without the need for specific government policies, the government actions in both countries have actually contributed to their persistence and prevented market forces from correcting the problem. That may be about to change

This paper analyses the influence of the exchange rate regime of a country on the level of tolerated corruption with a special focus on the interdependency of monetary and fiscal policies. Using a simple theoretical framework based on Barro-Gordon-Model I compare independent monetary policy with...

The high level of current account imbalances continues to be a major focus of international concern. In this paper I suggest why public and private actions in the United States and China are now likely to cause the current account imbalances in those countries to shrink and perhaps even to...

A new technique for estimating countries' de facto exchange rate regimes synthesizes two approaches. One approach estimates the implicit de facto basket weights in an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of the local currency value rate against major currency values. Here the hypothesis is a...

In this paper we present a model of a balance-of-payments crisis and use it to examine the Argentine experiment with a crawling peg between December 1978 and February 1981. The approach taken allows us to examine the evolution of a crisis when the collapse is not a perfectly-foreseen event. The...

During the 1997/98 Asian crisis and the 2007-2010 world financial and economic crisis, China has proved to be a stabilizer for East Asia and the world. The paper stresses the crucial role of the dollar peg for macroeconomic stability in China. The paper explores the current role of China's...

This paper finds that currency unions and direct exchange rate pegs raise trade through distinct channels. Panel data analysis of the period 1973-2000 indicates that currency unions have raised trade predominantly at the extensive margin, the entry of new firms or products. In contrast, direct...

Alexander Swoboda is one of the originators of the bipolar view that capital mobility creates pressure for countries to abandon intermediate exchange rate arrangements in favor of greater flexibility and harder pegs. This paper takes another look at the evidence for this hypothesis using two...

This paper argues that the lack of timely and decisive policy action to correct domestic and external imbalances contributed crucially to the build-up of financial excesses that led to the financial crisis and the Great Recession. We focus on 2002-07 and perform a number of counterfactual...

A new technique for estimating countries' de facto exchange rate regimes synthesizes two approaches. One approach estimates the implicit de facto basket weights in an OLS regression of the local currency value rate against major currency values. Here the hypothesis is a basket peg with little...

A new technique for estimating countries' de facto exchange rate regimes synthesizes two approaches. One approach estimates the implicit de facto basket weights in an OLS regression of the local currency value rate against major currency values. Here the hypothesis is a basket peg with little...

The paper updates the answer to the question: what precisely is the exchange rate regime that China has put into place since 2005, when it announced a move away from the dollar peg? Is it a basket anchor with the possibility of cumulatable daily appreciations, as was announced at the time? We...

This paper describes and analyzes the implementation of a crawling exchange rate band on an electronic trading platform. The placement of limit orders at the central bank's target rate serves as a credible policy statement that may coordinate beliefs of market participants. We find for our...

There has been much interest in whether fixed exchange rates can provide a strong source of discipline over domestic monetary and fiscal policies. We argue that previous studies, however, have not paid sufficient attention to the distinction between constraint and incentive effects and that...

This paper finds that currency unions and direct exchange rate pegs raise trade through distinct channels. Panel data analysis of the period 1973-2000 indicates that currency unions have raised trade predominantly at the extensive margin, the entry of new firms or products. In contrast, direct...

Alexander Swoboda is one of the originators of the bipolar view that capital mobility creates pressure for countries to abandon intermediate exchange rate arrangements in favor of greater flexibility and harder pegs. This paper takes another look at the evidence for this hypothesis using two...

The paper offers a new approach to estimate de facto exchange rate regimes, a synthesis of two techniques. One is a technique that the authors have used in the past to estimate implicit de facto weights when the hypothesis is a basket peg with little flexibility. The second is a technique used...

Indeed, the specification of equilibrium in the world economy depends on the exchange rate regime and thus, the early contributions to the postwar literature on exchange rate economics are to a large extent concerened with the role of speculation in foreign exchange markets. However, the world...

"The paper offers a new approach to estimate de facto exchange rate regimes, a synthesis of two techniques. One is a technique that the authors have used in the past to estimate implicit de facto weights when the hypothesis is a basket peg with little flexibility. The second is a technique used...

"This paper finds that currency unions and direct exchange rate pegs raise trade through distinct channels. Panel data analysis of the period 1973-2000 indicates that currency unions have raised trade predominantly at the extensive margin, the entry of new firms or products. In contrast, direct...

The paper offers a new approach to estimate de facto exchange rate regimes, a synthesis of two techniques. One is a technique that the authors have used in the past to estimate implicit de facto weights when the hypothesis is a basket peg with little flexibility. The second is a technique used...

This paper studies the credibility of the Venezuela crawling-band exchange rate regime during the period July, 1996 - February, 2002. We show that, introducing some modifications, the credibility analysis widely applied to target zone regimes can also be used in studying the credibility of...

The paper models an adjustable peg exchange rate arrangement as a policy rule with an escape clause under which the timing and magnitudes of realignments are the outcomes of policy optimization decisions. Under the assumptions that market participants are rational, risk averse, and fully...

Botswana''s successive currency devaluations and recent move from a fixed to a crawling peg exchange rate regime raise the question of whether the exchange rate might be misaligned with economic fundamentals. This paper, applying the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach, analyzes...