We study the impact of a minimum wage on business cycle volatility, depending upon its coverage and adjustment mechanism. As with other small open economies, Hong Kong SAR is vulnerable to external shocks, with its exchange rate regime precluding active monetary policy. Adjustment to past shocks...

In the literature on exports and investment, most productive firms are seen to invest abroad. In the Helpman et al. (2004) model, costs of transportation play a critical role in the decision about whether to serve foreign customers by exporting, or by producing abroad. We consider the case of...

This paper develops a simple model for measuring potential output that uses data on inflation, unemployment, and capacity utilization. We apply the model to 10 countries, in addition to the United States and the euro area. While there is a substantial amount of uncertainty around our estimates,...

The introduction of inflation targeting in 2006, together with important economic developments such as dedollarization, marked the beginning of a new macroeconomic framework in Armenia, which is likely to have changed the effectiveness of monetary policy. This paper is the first attempt to...

This paper examines episodes of the banking system distress and crisis in a large sample of countries. The empirical results identify several macroeconomic and financial variables as useful leading indicators. The main macroeconomic indicators were of limited value in predicting the Asian...

This paper considers the demand for various monetary aggregates with a view to assessing their potential roles as intermediate variables for monetary policy. Illustrative estimates using a generalized autoregressive distributed lag model are presented. For M1, the results support an “error...

This paper provides a theoretical underpinning for the major determinants of optimal reserve demand in the case where fundamental disequilibrium constitutes a key element governing reserve management. Emphasis is given to the role of reserves to smooth the process of economic adjustment by...

The issue of whether constraints should be placed on fiscal policies when moving to European monetary union is examined in the context of the use of fiscal policy for macroeconomic stabilization purposes. Examples of shocks hitting French and German economies are considered: an appreciation of...

This paper presents an econometric model of U.S. current account transactions. The model is used to analyze the factors behind the deterioration in the U.S. external position during the 1980s and to examine the sensitivity of the U.S. current account balance to changes in factors which are its...

This paper traces the effects of an appreciation of the deutsche mark with the help of a computable general equilibrium model under alternative structural policy scenarios. In the first scenario, characterized by severe structural rigidities, the contractionary effects of exchange rate...