In spite of the concerns about “twin deficits†(fiscal and current account deficits) for the U.S., empirical evidence suggests that “twin divergence†is a more regular feature of the data: when the fiscal accounts worsen, the current account improves and vice versa. We thus...

Currency crises are usually associated with large real depreciations. In some countries real depreciations are perceived to be very costly("fear of floating"). In this paper we try to understand the reasons behind this fear. We first look at episodes of currency crises in the '90s and establish...

Should monetary policy be preoccupied with large current account imbalances and extremely volatile exchange rates? Using a standard open economy model of pricing-to-market with incomplete asset markets and nominal rigidities, we show that the answer is yes. In our framework, supply shocks...

are accounted for, relative to traditional macromodels. We also find that, for reasonable parameterizations, consumption and employment (hence welfare) are not highly sensitive to product differentiation, and change little regardless of whether adjustment occurs through movements in relative...

twin deficits.

It is well known that prices respond only partially, if at all, to changes in the nominal exchange rate. Exchange-rate pass-through, quite low for consumer prices, is far for complete for international prices as well (see the survey in Goldberg and Knetter [1997]). To the extent that incomplete...

This paper introduces trade costs and endogenous number of varieties in an open economy model with monopolistic competition and short run nominal wage rigidities. We show that these two elements have important implications for the international transmission of monetary and productivity shocks....