Using data from more than 100 economies for the period of 1975 to 2005, we conduct an extensive empirical analysis of the determinants of international reserve holdings. Four groups of determinants, namely, traditional macro variables, financial variables, institutional variables, and dummy...

The conventional view, as expounded by sticky-price models, is that price adjustment determines the PPP reversion rate. This study examines the mechanism by which PPP deviations are corrected. Nominal exchange rate adjustment, not price adjustment, is shown to be the key engine governing the...

We estimate the effect of political regime transitions on growth with semi-parametric methods, combining difference in differences with matching, that have not been used in macroeconomic settings. Our semi-parametric estimates suggest that previous parametric estimates may have seriously...

One puzzling behavior of asset returns for various frequencies is the often observed positive autocorrelation at lag 1. To some extent this can be explained by standard asset pricing models when assuming time varying risk premia. However, one often finds better results when directly fitting an...

In this paper we introduce a bootstrap procedure to test parameter restrictions in vector autoregressive models which is robust in cases of conditionally heteroskedastic error terms. The adopted wild bootstrap method does not require any parametric specification of the volatility process and...

In the sequel of its seminal application in Davidson, Hendry, Srba and Yeo (1978) the single equation error correction model has been widely used in empirical practice. Providing a clear distinction between short- and long-run dynamics this model allows OLS-methods to be as efficient as...

Multivariate Volatility Models belong to the class of nonlinear models for financial data. Here we want to focus on multivariate GARCH models. These models assume that the variance of the innovation distribution follows a time dependent process conditional on information which is generated by...

We explore the role of interest rate policy in the exchange rate determination process. Specifically, we derive exchange rate equations from interest rate rules that are theoretically optimal under a few alternative settings. The exchange rate equation depends on its underlying interest rate...

This study investigates whether greater nominal exchange rate flexibility aids real exchange rate adjustment based on data from dual exchange rates in developing countries. Specifically, we analyze whether the more flexible parallel market rate produces faster real exchange rate adjustment than...