This paper offers empirical evidence that a country's choice of exchange rate regime can have a signifficant impact on its medium-term rate of productivity growth. Moreover, the impact depends critically on the country's level of financial development, its degree of market regulation, and its...

The paper analyses whether, and to what extent, emerging market economies (EMEs) have systemic importance for global financial markets, above and beyond their influence during crises episodes. Using a novel database of exogenous economic and political shocks for 14 EMEs, we find that EME shocks...

One plausible mechanism through which financial market shocks may propagate across countries is through the impact that past gains and losses may have on investors’ risk aversion and behavior. This paper presents a stylized model illustrating how heterogeneous changes in investors’ risk...

We argue that one reason why emerging economies borrow short term is that it is cheaper than borrowing long term. This is especially the case during crises, as in these episodes the relative cost of long-term borrowing increases. We construct a unique database of sovereign bond prices, returns,...

Does financial development result in capital being reallocated more rapidly to industries where it is most productive? We argue that if this was the case, financially developed countries should see faster growth in industries with investment opportunities due to global demand and productivity...

The recent wave of financial crises has fueled the debate on the effect of IFIs intervention on governments' incentives to undertake reforms. In this paper we treat this intervention more generally as a country insurance contract, and examine its implications in a stylized set-up. More...

We analyze optimal ï¬scal,monetary and exchange rate policy in a simple small open econonomy model with price setting frictions.We perform our analysis in the tradition of optimal dynamic Ramsey problems.We characterize optimal allocations and the government policies that implement the optimal...

This paper analyzes the behavior of international capital flows by foreign and domestic agents, dubbed gross capital flows, over the business cycle and during financial crises. We show that gross capital flows are very large and volatile, especially relative to net capital flows. When foreigners...

The paper tests whether there were events of contagion, and portfolio shift, in the sovereign bond markets of eleven emerging countries' between January 1995 and November 2001. From existing definitions, we narrow down the concept of contagion by focusing on pricing errors, after general market...

The purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis has attracted a lot of attention from academics and policy-makers particularly, during the recent float. Most previous studies used data from the developed world. This study examines the validity of the PPP hypothesis using data during the recent...