We identify incentives generated by the Bretton Woods II system that may have contributed to the sub-prime liquidity crisis now working its way through the international monetary system. We then evaluate the persistent conjecture that the liquidity crisis is or will become a balance of payments...

This paper investigates the potential reasons for the surprisingly different labor market performance of the United States, Canada, Germany, and several other OECD countries during and after the Great Recession of 2008-09. Unemployment rates did not change substantially in Germany, increased and...

Do central banks rebalance their currency shares? The answer matters because the dollar's predominant role in large official reserve holdings means that widespread rebalancing requires central banks to buy (sell) a depreciating (appreciating) dollar, stabilising its value against other major...

Recent sanctions on the use of Russia's international reserve assets seem likely to reduce the appeal of US dollar reserves as a "shock absorber" for international payments. But international reserves are also a means to reassure foreign investors that problematic countries will not confiscate...

This paper examines the role of spillover effects of minimum wages and threat effects of unionization in changes in wage inequality in the United States between 1979 and 2017. A distribution regression framework is introduced to estimate both types of spillover effects. Threat effects double the...