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...

This paper untangles the causes behind real exchange rate devaluation events with particular attention paid to the Sudden Stop of capital flows. By utilizing cumulative impulse response function and variance decomposition analysis, we argue that there is the asymmetric response across Sudden...

Krol (1996) reports estimates of the saving-investment correlation, based on panel regressions, that are much lower than commonly found in the literature. This note argues that this low estimate is not related to the panel estimation technique, as Krol claims, but largely to the inclusion of...

Empirical evidence shows that capital inflows are often used by developing countries to finance excessive consumption. The existing literature explains these phenomena as resulting from institutional imperfections. In contrast, we argue that they can be fundamental outcomes of open capital...

The study examines the reasons for financial crises in 31 emerging market countries during 1980-2001. It estimates a probit model using 23 macroeconomic and financial sector variables. Traditional variables such as unemployment and inflation, as well as several indicators of indebtedness such as...

Just when China’s leaders receive conflicting signals of “overheating” and “below-potential growth”, they encounter tremendous external pressure to revalue the Renminbi (RMB) substantially. Our conclusion is that the major macroeconomic challenges have their roots in China’s...

This paper makes three contributions: First, I construct annual time series of gross domestic investment and national saving in the U.S. for the 1897–1949 period using historical component series. I compare the qualitative and quantitative properties of the newly constructed series with the...

Since the start of the 1990s, several countries have abandoned fixed- but-adjustable exchange rate regimes. The tendency towards floating exchange rate regimes, or alternatively monetary unions, has given rise to a debate on the disappearance of pure currency crises, and the literature has...