When equity prices are determined as the discounted sum of current and expected future dividends, Shiller (1981) and LeRoy and Porter (1981) derived a relationship between the variance of the price of equities, p(t), and the variance of the ex post realized discounted sum of current and future...

This paper examines the extent to which permanent terms-of-trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on private savings. The first part uses a simple three-period model to show that, if households expect to face binding borrowing constraints in bad states of nature, savings rates will respond...

The volatility of the exchange rate under floating rates can be interpreted in terms of approaches that allow for short term price rigidity as well as in terms of models that consider the magnification effect of new information. This paper combines the two approaches into a unified...

This paper evaluates the degree to which current account patterns are explained by the variables suggested by the literature, and reflects on possible future patterns. We start with panel regressions explaining the current account of 69 countries during 1981-2006. We identify an asymmetric...

This paper clarifies one of the puzzling results of the economic growth literature: the impact of military expenditure is frequently found to be non-significant or negative, yet most countries spend a large fraction of their GDP on defense and the military. We start by empirical evaluation of...

This paper models and tests the implications of costly enforcement of property rights on the pattern of foreign direct investment (FDI). We posit that domestic agents have a comparative advantage over foreign agents in overcoming some of the obstacles associated with corruption and weak...

The purchasing power parity puzzle relates to the adjustment of real exchange rates. Real exchange rates are extremely volatile, suggesting that temporary shocks emanate from the monetary sector. But the half-life of real exchange rate deviations is extremely large -- 2.5 to 5 years. This...

This paper builds a model of adjustment toward PPP for a panel of real exchange rates. The model eliminates some inconsistencies in previous models, which implied a model for the real exchange rate of country B relative to country C that was not commensurate with the posited model of the real...

We investigate the behavior of the long-run U.S./U.K. real exchange rate from 1885 to 1995. Our long-run real exchange rate series is derived from an unobserved components model which divides the real exchange rate into permanent and transitory components. The transitory component is modeled as...

Failures of the law of one price explain much of the variation in real C.P.I. exchange rates. We use C.P.I. data for U.S. cities and Canadian cities for 14 categories of consumer prices to examine the nature of the deviations from the law of one price. The distance between cities explains a...