Hurricanes in the Caribbean and Central America represent a natural experiment to test the intertemporal approach to current account determination. The intertemporal approach allows for the possibility of intertemporal trade, via international borrowing. Previous tests of intertemporal current...

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the aggregate international demand schedule for emerging market (EM) securities as an asset class. The standard ‘push-pull’ model of capital flows is modified by reference to recent work on portfolio choice in the context...

The paper analyses household money demand and consumption. Variables that measure shortage and expectations about its future course are introduced to capture the effects of the transition from centrally planned to market economy. The Johansen procedure is used to identify a system of the two...

Empirical analyses of Cagan`s money demand schedule have broadly speaking suffered from the following problems: (i) Inability to model the data to the end of the hyperinflation. (ii) Difficulties in making congruent models for systems of variables. (iii) Discrepancies between estimated and...

In many countries, house prices are subject to boom/bust cycles and in some these are linked to severe economic and financial instability.  Overheating can have both a price and a quantity dimension, but it is likely that they are linked by common drivers.  However, much depends on the...

After the global financial crisis, there is greater awareness of the need to understand the interactions between the financial sector and the real economy and hence the potential for financial instability.  Data from the financial flow of funds, previously relatively neglected, are now seen as...

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption.  This paper exploits liquid and illiquid wealth time series from household balance sheet data for South Africa, previously constructed by the authors, to explain fluctuations in the ratios of...

The consumption behaviour of UK, US and Japanese households is examined and compared using a modern Ando-Modigliani style consumption function.  The models incorporate income growth expectations, income uncertainty, housing collateral and other credit effects.  These models therefore capture...

The swiftness and devastating impact of recent financial crises have taken many market participants by surprise, and pose challenges for economists seeking a theory of the onset of a crisis. We propose such a theory based on two features. The actions of diverse economic actors which undermine...

Analyses of the Asian crisis have focused excessively on the financial sector, especially the banks. The role of the real sector in exposing the financial system to stress has been under-emphasized. This paper provides a real-sector explanation for the Thai crisis of 1997, demonstrating the role...