The paper evaluates current account dynamics in countries with different exchange rate regimes within the EU. In this, the empirical analysis explicitly differentiates between countries with a flexible and a fixed exchange rate regime and members of a monetary union. In addition, we model the...

This paper extends the work of Kaminsky and Schmukler (2003) to the Baltic and Central Eastern European future Member States of the European Union, to test if the same short-run increase in cyclical volatility arising from financial integration is observed in this specific sample of “emerging...

This paper traces the evolution of the Federal Reserve and its engagement with the global economy over the last three decades of the 20th century: 1970 to 2000. The paper examines the Federal Reserve’s role in international economic and financial policy and analysis covering four areas: the...

Before the 1997-98 crisis, the East Asian economies—except for Japan—informally pegged their currencies to the dollar. These soft pegs made them vulnerable to a depreciating yen thereby aggravating the crisis. To limit future misalignments, the IMF wants East Asian currencies to float...

This paper compares alternative estimates of systemic time-varying excess returns for the Irish pound and the Spanish peseta, against the German mark, since 1985. We make use of progressively more complex models, going from the GARCH in Mean specification, to the International Capital Asset...

Differences in growth, productivity and inflation levels are going to be a prominent feature of the future of EMU, as the convergence process is still ongoing in the new Member States. This convergence process can be described by the Balassa-Samuelson proposition, which states that faster growth...

La théorie des zones monétaires optimales avait l’avantage de présenter le choix d’un régime de change en terme d’une analyse coûts-bénéfices. Elle s’est cantonnée à l’aspect asymétrique des chocs tout en évacuant l’aspect structurel. Cet article se propose de réexaminer...

In this paper we provide evidence for Evans and Lyons' (2005b) model of an information aggregation process in FX markets using a German bank's end-user order flow from 2002 to 2003. Though customer order flow is unambiguously the vehicle incorporating non-public information into exchange rates...

Accurate modeling of extreme price changes is vital to financial risk management. We examine the small sample properties of adaptive tail index estimators under the class of student-t marginal distribution functions including GARCH and propose a model-based bias-corrected estimation approach....

The role of direct flights in trade costs is investigated by introducing and using a micro price data set on 49 goods across 433 international cities covering 114 countries. It is shown that having at least one direct flight reduces trade costs by about 1,400 miles in distance equivalent terms,...