In assessing Alexander Swoboda's great influence on economics, two themes stand out: the determinants of global inflation, particularly in the 1970s, and the choice of an exchange rate regime consistent with domestic monetary and fiscal policies. Although seemingly narrowly focused on China, our...

The paper discusses global imbalances under the aspect of an asymmetric world monetary system. It identifies the US and euro area (Germany) as center countries with rising current account deficits (US) and surpluses (Germany) which are matched by respective current account surpluses of...

The paper analyses the monetary policy operations of central banks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We distinguish the pattern of monetary policy operations of the liquidity providing central banks of the large industrialized countries (creditor central banks) and the liquidity...

Monetary policy in CEE is an important determinant in the wage bargaining process, because trade unions have to predict inflation as one component of future real wages. This paper scrutinizes whether countries in CEE that officially announce an inflation target are tempted to act...

In this paper, I analyze determinants of carry trade returns in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). I show that carry trades to CEE were lucrative due to interest rate spreads between the funding and investment currency from 2004 to 2006. They became unprofitable when liquidity risk and exchange...

The adoption of quantitative easing (QE) policy by the United States (US) Federal Reserve Bank since early 2009 has aroused widespread concerns in Asia and elsewhere regarding its possible impact in terms of the weakening of the US dollar and stimulating capital outflows to emerging economies...

This paper takes stock of recent research dealing with the degree to which the trilemma choices of Asian countries facilitated a smoother adjustment during the global crisis of 2008–2009, and the way the region has been coping with the adjustment to the post-crisis challenges. We point out...

This paper presents a theoretical framework for policy making based on the “impossible trinity” or the “trilemma” hypothesis. A simple optimization model shows that placing more weight in terms of preference for each of the three open macroeconomic policies — exchange rate stability,...

This paper extends our previous paper (Aizenman, Chinn, and Ito 2008) and explores some of the unexplored questions. First, we examine the channels through which the trilemma policy configurations affect output volatility. Secondly, we investigate how trilemma policy configurations affect the...

Given low interest rates in the large industrial countries and buoyant capital inflows into the emerging markets East Asian central banks have accumulated large stocks of foreign reserves. As the resulting easing of monetary conditions has become a threat to domestic price and financial...