This paper discusses desirable exchange rate regimes and how countries can shift from their current regimes to these regimes over the medium term. We demonstrate the superiority of a basket-peg regime with the basket weight rule over a floating regime with the interest rate rule or the money...

This paper discusses desirable exchange rate regimes and how countries can shift from their current regimes to these regimes over the medium term. We demonstrate the superiority of a basket-peg regime with the basket weight rule over a floating regime with the interest rate rule or the money...

This paper analyzes the optimal transition of the exchange rate regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). How the PRC can successfully reach the desired regime—whether a basket peg or floating regime—from the current dollar-peg regime remains a major question. To...

How much of carry trade excess returns can be explained by the presence of disaster risk? To answer this question, we propose a simple structural model that includes both Gaussian and disaster risk premia and can be estimated even in samples that do not contain disasters. The model points to a...

Existing estimates of power laws in firm size typically ignore the impact of international trade. Using a simple theoretical framework, we show that international trade systematically affects the distribution of firm size: the power law exponent among exporting firms should be strictly lower in...

This paper offers empirical evidence that real exchange rate volatility can have a significant impact on long-term rate of productivity growth, but the effect depends critically on a country's level of financial development. For countries with relatively low levels of financial development,...

We revisit the debt overhang question. We first use non-parametric techniques to isolate a panel of countries on the downward sloping section of a debt Laffer curve. In particular, overhang countries are ones where a threshold level of debt is reached in sample, beyond which (initial) debt ends...

We present a model of the optimal level of international reserves for a small open economy seeking insurance against sudden stops in capital flows. We derive a formula for the optimal level of reserves, and show that plausible calibrations can explain reserves of the order of magnitude observed...

The paper studies how high leverage and crises can arise as a result of changes in the income distribution. Empirically, the periods 1920-1929 and 1983-2007 both exhibited a large increase in the income share of the rich, a large increase in leverage for the remainder, and an eventual financial...

How do credit standards on the mortgage market affect neighbourhood choice and the resulting level of urban segregation? To answer this question, we first develop a model of neighbourhood choice with credit constraints. The model shows that a relaxation of credit standards can either increase or...