We use a panel of annual data for over one hundred developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes. We define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation. We examine...

We use a panel of annual data for over one hundred developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes. We define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation. We examine...

This comment discusses the issues regarding the scale of conditional finance offered by the International Monetary Fund in recent rescue packages, and the related issues regarding a true lender of last resort. It reviews critiques of the Fund?s performance in recent emerging-market crises,...

The corners hypothesis holds that intermediate exchange rate regimes are vanishing, or should be. Surprisingly for a new conventional wisdom, this hypothesis so far lacks analytic foundations. In part, the generalization is overdone. We nevertheless offer one possible theoretical rationale, a...

Survey data on a broad cross section of 17 currencies are used to determine whether the forward discount moves primarily in response to changes in expectations of depreciation, or in the risk premium. We find that changes in expected depreciation are quantitatively significant. However we also...

The optimal-diversification model of investors' portfolio behavior can give a linear relationship between the exchange risk premium and the conditional exchange rate variance. This note surveys recent empirical work that allows for the conditional variance itself, and therefore the risk premium,...

Gravity-based cross-sectional evidence indicates that currency unions and currency boards stimulate trade; cross-sectional evidence indicates that trade stimulates income. This paper estimates the effect that common-currency regimes have, via trade, on income per capita. We use economic and...