In this paper we analyse the recent efforts of the international financial institutions to limit the moral hazard created by their assistance to crisis countries. We question the wisdom of the case-by-case approach taken in Pakistan, Ecuador, Romania and Ukraine. We show that because default and...

We examine the implications for borrowing costs of including collective-action clauses in loan contracts. For a sample of some 2,000 international bonds, we compare the spreads on bonds subject to UK governing law, which typically include collective-action clauses, with spreads on bonds subject...

This paper investigates whether oil prices have a reliable and stable out-of-sample relationship with the Canadian/U.S dollar nominal exchange rate. Despite state-of-the-art methodologies, we find little systematic relation between oil prices and the exchange rate at the monthly and quarterly...

This paper analyses the extent to which ASEAN may be suitable for a regional monetary arrangement. On the economic front, we review evidence on patterns of trade, economic shocks, the extent of factor mobility, and the monetary transmission mechanism. We find that ASEAN today is less suitable...

Important questions concerning the structure and operation of a European Central Bank remain unanswered. Although there exists no precedent for the process of institution-building in which the European Community is currently engaged, the founding and early operations of the Federal Reserve...

The paper gives a brief account of the Swedish experience of an inflation target in a floating exchange rate regime; identifies, documents and discusses the current problems in Swedish monetary policy and their origins; suggests what can be done to remedy the problems; and draws some general...

We examine the expected survival time of a unilateral exchange rate target zone, when constraints on monetary policy prevent the central bank from exclusively focusing on defending the target zone. In general, the width of the target zone has a negligible effect on the expected survival time,...

Recent years have seen a wave of empirical studies attempting to give empirical content to the theory of optimum currency areas as a way of marshalling evidence on the costs and benefits of EMU. This paper reviews this empirical literature, as a way of examining the success with which theory has...

This paper examines some popular explanations for the smooth operation of the pre-1914 gold standard. We find that the rapid adjustment of economies to underlying disturbances played an important role in stabilizing output and employment under the gold standard system, but no evidence that this...