This paper investigates the main sources of instability in Brazil during the currency and financial distress episode of 2002. We test for financial contagion from the Argentine crisis and the impact of factors including IMF intervention and political uncertainty in raising the probability of...

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 investigates the effect of sovereign risk on the stochastic rational expectations equilibrium of a real business cycle small open economy. The credit market is imperfect because the sovereign cannot commit to repay its outstanding debt and chooses to default when it is optimal to do...

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...

Following the real appreciation of the US dollar in the first half of the 1980s, travel expenditures in the current account soared. Employing standard regression techniques as well as Markov-switching regime analysis we show that such expenditures did not return to their pre- appreciation levels...

We investigate the interactions between optimal regulation and external credit constraints. When part of a regulated ¯rm is owned by foreign investors, a credit-constrained country who wants to send pro¯ts abroad has to generate enough surplus in the trade account in order to compensate...

Using nonlinear unit root tests developed by Kapetanios et al. (2003), we find strong evidence that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based Malaysian Ringgit – U.S. Dollar (MYR/USD) real exchange rates are nonlinear stationary, implying that MYR/USD nominal...

Using nonlinear unit root tests developed by Kapetanios et al. (2003), we find strong evidence that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based Malaysian Ringgit – U.S. Dollar (MYR/USD) real exchange rates are nonlinear stationary, implying that MYR/USD nominal...

The paper investigates sharp reductions seen in current account deficits in selected transition countries in the 1992-2003 period. The analysis focuses on three important aspects of these current account reversals: a) to examine those factors that might have triggered the reversals and to...

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...