An economy is in a liquidity trap when monetary policy cannot influence either real or nominal variables of interest. A necessary condition for this is that the short nominal interest rate is constrained by its lower bound, typically zero. The paper considers two small analytical models, one...

Jim Tobin, who died on March 11, 2002 at the age of 84, was one of giants of economics of the second half of the twentieth century and the greatest macroeconomist of his generation. Tobin’s influence on macroeconomic theory is so pervasive - so much part of our professional ‘acquis’ - that...

We present a model that reproduces two salient facts characterizing the international monetary system: i) Faster growing countries are associated with lower net capital inflows and ii) Countries that grow faster accumulate more international reserves and receive more net private inflows. We...

We show that in an open-economy OLG model, the interaction between growth differentials and household credit constraints, more severe in fast-growing countries, can explain three prominent global trends: a divergence in private saving rates between advanced and emerging economies, large net...

After liberalizing international transactions of financial assets, many countries experience large swings in asset prices, capital flows, and aggregate production. This paper studies how the adjustment to capital account liberalization depends upon the degree of development of a domestic...

The `quantity anomalies' that arise from standard international business cycle models are cross-country correlations in consumption being higher than output, and negative comovement in aggregate investment and employment. This paper shows that incorporating multiple sectors with heterogeneous...

This paper presents a model of financial resource curse, i.e. episodes of abundant access to foreign capital coupled with weak productivity growth. We study a two-sector, tradable and non-tradable, small open economy. The tradable sector is the engine of growth, and productivity growth is...

Commodity trade and financial asset trade are both integral parts of globalization, yet little has been studied on their interplay. In a framework that integrates these two paradigms of trade, a new force driving international capital flows emerges: capital tends to flow towards countries that...

We show that in an open-economy OLG model, the interaction between growth differentials and household credit constraints, more severe in fast-growing countries, can explain three prominent global trends: a divergence in private saving rates between advanced and emerging economies, large net...

Can the structure of asset markets change the way monetary policy should be conducted? Following a linear-quadratic approach, the present paper addresses this question in a New Keynesian small open economy framework. Our results reveal that the configuration of asset markets significantly...