We study the gains from increased wage flexibility and their dependence on exchange rate policy, using a small open economy model with staggered price and wage setting. Two results stand out: (i) the impact of wage adjustments on employment is smaller the more the central bank seeks to stabilize...

An optimum currency area is an economic unit composed of regions affected symmetrically by disturbances and between which labour and other factors of production flow freely. The symmetrical nature of disturbances and the high degree of factor mobility make it optimal to forsake nominal exchange...

Originally propounded by the 16th-century scholars of the University of Salamanca, the concept of purchasing power parity (PPP) was revived in the interwar period in the context of the debate concerning the appropriate level at which to re-establish international exchange rate parities. Broadly...

This Paper documents four basic facts about investment goods and investment prices. First, investment has a very significant non-tradable component in the form of construction services. Second, distributions services (wholesaling, retailing, and transportation) are much less important for...

Border prices of traded goods are highly sensitive to exchange rates, but the CPI, and the retail prices of these goods, are more stable. Our paper decomposes the sources of this stability for twenty-one OECD countries, focusing on the important roles of distribution margins and imported inputs...

This paper presents a simultaneous model of exchange rates between the three major countries. In addition to incorporating long-run equilibria and short-run dynamics, the model is designed to capture complex interactions between currencies not normally considered in exchange rate models. These...

Five real exchange rate indicators are computed to assess the international competitiveness of Hungarian industry. These indicators are explained in econometric equations by employment, unemployment, productivity, interest spread and real producer wage. Causality tests reveal that external...

Although the worldwide growth in dollarization of bank deposits has recently slowed, it has already reached very high levels in dozens of countries. Building on earlier findings that allowed the main cross-country variations in the share of dollars to be explained in terms of national policies...

We compare the resumption of convertibility into gold by the United States in 1879 and the United Kingdom in 1925 to ascertain the degree to which the outcomes reflect differences in strategies adopted by the authorities or in the external environment. It is concluded that external factors were...

This paper surveys the evidence on the effectiveness of monetary transmission in developing countries. We summarize the arguments for expecting the bank lending channel to be the dominant means of monetary transmission in such countries, and present a simple model that suggests why this channel...