Fixed exchange rate regimes have come into disrepute, as their defense has become all but impossible. Yet, while a determined attack on a currency cannot be prevented or, ultimately, withstood, policies can reduce the vulnerability of a country to such attacks. The paper develops an analytical...

This paper analyzes the determinants of currency substitution in Bolivia in the period following the 1984/85 hyperinflation. We find that expected exchange rate depreciation and actual interest rate differentials between boliviano and dollar deposits in the Bolivian banking system are...

Botswana's successive currency devaluations and recent move from a fixed to a crawling peg exchange rate regime raise the question of whether the exchange rate might be misaligned with economic fundamentals. This paper, applying the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach, analyzes...

This paper reviews the experience with capital controls in industrial and developing countries, considers the policy issues raised when the effectiveness of capital controls diminishes, examines the medium-term benefits and costs of an open capital account, and analyzes the policy measures that...

Much recent analysis of international monetary and fiscal policy issues, such as the choice of an exchange-rate regime or the design of a policy coordination scheme, has been conducted by stochastic simulations with multicountry econometric models. In these studies, it has become standard...

This paper examines the question of how to design an optimal and sustainable exchange rate regime in a world economy of two interdependent countries. It develops a Barro-Gordon type two-country model and compares noncooperative equilibria under different assumptions of monetary policy...

Relative GDP shares are frequently used as weights in aggregations. In order to ensure that these weights reflect countries’ shares in real output, GDP data in national currencies should be converted into a common numeraire currency at purchasing power parity (PPP) rates. A review of the...

We propose a new Financial Condition Index (FCI) for Asian economies based on two different methodologies: a VAR model and a Dynamic Factor Model. The paper shows that this index has predictive power in forecasting GDP growth and may be thus used as a leading indicator. Based on the FCI,...

This Selected Issues paper examines competitiveness and the equilibrium real exchange rate for Ghana. It estimates a behavioral equilibrium exchange rate model for Ghana to establish to what extent real effective exchange rate (REER) movements have been driven by an adjustment to its equilibrium...