The debate on trade wars and currency wars has re-emerged since the Great recession of 2009. We study the two forms of non-cooperative policies within a single framework. First, we compare the elasticity of trade flows to import tariffs and to the real exchange rate, based on product level data...

Import regulations are globally the most prevalent form of intervention in international trade. The regulations should, under rules of the WTO, protect consumers and the environment but can be used to protect producers. We investigate the ambiguity of intent. We set out a model that when applied...

We investigate how protectionist policies influence economic growth. Our empirical strategy exploits an extraordinary tax scandal that gave rise to an unexpected change of government in Sweden. A free-trade majority in parliament was overturned by a protectionist majority in 1887. We employ the...

The recent financial crises, especially the debt crisis in Asia, have led to questions su ch as: what are their causes, what is an excessive debt and how vulnerable is an economy to external shocks? We develop an economic model of international finance and debt based upon two sources of...

Do the U.S. have a current account surplus or a deficit with the EU? Since 2009, official sources disagree: The U.S. Department of Commerce claims a consistent U.S. surplus while Eurostat reports the opposite. International transactions are notoriously difficult to measure accurately, but the...

We apply a "new" conventional (CAPB-based) measure of fiscal policy, which is less prone to endogeneity issues, and find that a 1-percent of GDP fiscal consolidation leads to the improvement of the current account-to-GDP ratio by approximately 0.8 percent of GDP, while previous research based on...

During the past three decades, Japan s current account experienced five large swings. The yen appreciated considerably in periods when the current account boomed, and it depreciated whenever Japan s external performance weakened. However, there has always been a certain lag in the adjustment of...

Both global imbalances and financial market (de-)regulation feature prominently among the potential causes of the global financial crisis, but they have been largely discussed separately. In this paper, we take a different angle and investigate the relationship between financial market...

This paper presents a two-country two-commodity dynamic model with free international asset trade in which one country achieves full employment and the other suffers long-run unemployment. Own and spill-over effects of changes in policy, technological and preference parameters that emerge...

The paper analyses the role of fiscal and monetary policy for the development of the current account imbalances in the euro area, including the most recent developments during the coronavirus crisis. Several financial transmission channels such as international bank lending, changes in TARGET2...