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 anatomy of financial crises shows that the worldwide debt crisis of the 1980s was not unprecedented and was even forecast by many. Eichengreen and Lindert bring together original studies that assess the historical record to see what lessons can be learned for resolving today's crisis.

While the current account of euro area as a whole has remained almost balanced in the past two decades, several member countries have sizeable deficits or surpluses. In this paper, we interpret these imbalances as indicators of net capital flows among the euro-area countries and show that these...

We use futures instead of forward rates to study the complete maturity spectrum of the forward premium puzzle from two days to six months. At short maturities, the slope coefficient is positive, but it turns negative as the maturity increases to the monthly level. Futures data allow us to...

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,...

The renewed quest for a European monetary union raises the question: Is Europe ready for a common currency? We compare the variability and persistence of real exchange rate fluctuations within the German monetary union and between Germany and eight European countries to assess the viability of a...

The choice of the exchange rate regime and the capital account regime are among the core macro economic policy decisions for developing countries, with important repercussions for a country's macro economic stability, ability to attract foreign capital, and international trade. Existing...

We analyse the choice of exchange rate regimes of the 25 transition economies in Europe and the CIS after 1990. The empirical results show that the traditional Optimum Currency Area considerations provide relevant guidance for the exchange rate regime choices in these countries. Moreover,...

We use time-series methods to estimate a simple aggregate supply and demand model in order to analyse the comparative performance of fixed and flexible exchange rate systems and test competing hypotheses designed to explain shifts between exchange rate regimes. The paper provides a coherent...