Real GDP growth and real effective exchange rate (REER) appreciation appear cointegrated with the current and financial accounts of the U.S. balance of payments. On this basis, we estimate reduced form equations showing that expected changes and shocks to real GDP, the REER, energy prices, and...

The export performance of Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind that of developing countries in other regions for the past two decades, and total export proceeds have fallen significantly since 1980. Many factors explain this outcome, including continued concentration in slowly-growing non-fuel...

This paper provides updated information on the external debt problem of sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1980 and 1990 the region’s external debt more than tripled, to US$171 billion, while debt service payments and rescheduling rose by more than 150 percent to US$20 billion. In addition, the...

This paper examines the problems in establishing currency convertibility- and the optimal timing- in formerly planned economies making the transition to market-oriented systems.

This paper examines whether capital outflows may have contributed to output declines during the Asian Crisis by reducing the financing available for domestic investment. Panel data regressions suggest a positive, short-term relationship between net capital inflows and investment during the...

This paper examines the relative importance of monetary growth and exchange rate depreciation as causes of inflation in a sample of 10 Sub-Saharan African countries. Causality tests and impulse response functions derived from vector autoregression (VAR) analysis suggest that both monetary...

This paper sheds light on the quantitative behavioral responses of key economic variables in the Palestinian economy in the face of major economic shocks and draws implications for the choice of an exchange rate regime should a decision be taken to introduce a national currency. Time-series...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the degree of nominal wage flexibility in a sample of nineteen industrial countries. Across countries, aggregate uncertainty increases the degree of wage flexibility in the face of various shocks. Wage flexibility stabilizes fluctuations in real...

Conventional wisdom states that currency depreciation in oil-producing countries are contractionary because demand effects, limited by the prevalence of oil exports priced in dollars, are more than offset by adverse supply effects. Iran, however, has experienced a rapid increase in non-oil...

The paper examines the asymmetric effects of exchange rate fluctuations on real output and price in developing countries. The theoretical model decomposes movements in the exchange rate into anticipated and unanticipated components. Unanticipated currency fluctuations determine aggregate demand...