We show the importance of a dynamic aggregation bias in accounting for the PPP puzzle. We prove that established time-series and panel methods substantially exaggerate the persistence of real exchange rates because of heterogeneity in the dynamics of disaggregated relative prices. When...

External demand was the main driver of growth in Thailand in 2006 and 2007. However, WEO projections indicate moderating foreign demand in 2008, with U.S. growth being revised downwards to reflect the turmoil in housing and credit markets, and high oil prices. While the share of Thai exports to...

Under near-singularity conditions typically generated by persistence in current account data the predictions of present value models become extremely sensitive to small sample estimation error. Moreover, traditional Wald tests will distort the likelihood that the model is true. Using OECD data...

This paper derives risk indicators for the major Chilean banks based on contingent claims analysis, an extension of Black-Scholes-Merton option-pricing theory. These risk indicators are clearly tied to macroeconomic and financial developments in Chile and outside, but bank responses are highly...

This is the third of a series of papers that are being written as part of a larger project to estimate a small quarterly Global Projection Model (GPM). The GPM project is designed to improve the toolkit for studying both own-country and cross-country linkages. In this paper, we estimate a small...

We study the effects of oil-price shocks on the U.S. economy combining narrative and quantitative approaches. After examining daily oil-related events since 1984, we classify them into various event types. We then develop measures of exogenous shocks that avoid endogeneity and predictability...

This paper formulates a novel modeling framework that delivers: (a) forecasts of indicators of systemic real risk and systemic financial risk based on density forecasts of indicators of real activity and financial health; (b) stress-tests as measures of the dynamics of responses of systemic risk...

This paper extends the long-run growth model of Esfahani et al. (2009) to a labor exporting country that receives large inflows of external income?the sum of remittances, FDI and general government transfers?from major oil-exporting economies. The theoretical model predicts real oil prices to be...

The 2008 crisis underscored the interconnectedness of the international business cycle, with U.S. shocks leading to the largest global slowdown since the 1930s. We estimate spillover effects across major advanced country regions in a structural VAR (SVAR) using pre-crisis data. Our new method...

This paper investigates the relationship between unrecorded economic activity associated with the production of illicit coca and formally recorded economic activity in Peru. It does so by attempting to construct new regional level estimates for coca production and by implementing recently...