Before the crisis of 1997-98, the East Asian economies except for Japan but including China pegged their currencies to the U.S. dollar. To avoid further turmoil, the IMF now argues that these currencies should float more freely. However, our econometric estimations show that the dollar's...

Before the crisis of 1997/98, the East Asian economies - except for Japan but including China - pegged their currencies to the US dollar. To avoid further turmoil, the IMF argues that these currencies should float more freely. However, the authors' econometric estimations show that the dollar's...

In this paper we characterize empirically the comovements of macro variables typically observed in middle income countries, as well as the boom-bust cycle that has been observed during the last two decades. We find that many countries that have liberalized their financial markets, have witnessed...