Both before and after the Asian crisis, the dollar has been the dominant anchor and reserve currency in East Asia. Due to underdeveloped capital markets and the limited international role of their domestic currencies, the East Asian countries (except Japan) are likely to continue to stabilize...

China keeps its exchange rate tightly fixed to the dollar. Its productivity growth and trade surplus have been high, and it continues to accumulate large dollar reserves. Many observers take this as evidence that the renminbi is undervalued and should be appreciated to reduce the Chinese trade...

We use realized volatility to study the influence of central bank interventions on the yen/dollar exchange rate. Realized volatility is a technical innovation that allows specifying a system of equations for returns, realized volatility, and interventions without endogeneity bias. We find that...

Diverging fiscal policy paths, housing booms and diverging unit labour costs were driving forces of rising intra-European current account imbalances, which were underpinned by low interest rates. Since the outbreak of the crisis, the adjustment of intra-EMU current account imbalances has been...

Japan's industrial and trade policies are often seen as the reason for high Japanese balance of trade surpluses. Does this theory stand up to a close examination of the relationships between balance of trade, trade policy and structural change?

This paper contributes to the discussion on the European current account imbalances by analysing the intra-European trends since 1990 based on the theory of optimum currency areas. The authors show that German unification was the origin of not only the 1992-93 EMS crisis but also rising...