The case in favor of the Tobin tax features two major arguments. (1) Such a levy might reduce exchange rate volatility. A simple model giving this conclusion is presented in the Appendix. The starting point is a calculation showing that even a small tax would be a large disincentive to...

Argentina's money and banking system was hit hard by the Great Depression. The banking sector was awash with bad assets that built up in the 1920s. Gold convertibility was suspended in December 1929, even before the crisis seriously damaged the core economies. Commonly, these events are seen as...

Estimates of growth equations have found a role for openness, particularly in explaining rapid growth among East Asian countries. But major concerns of simultaneous causality between growth and trade have been expressed. This study aims to deal with the endogeneity of trade by using as...

We survey the empirical literature on floating nominal exchange rates over the past decade. Exchange rates are difficult to forecast at short- to medium-term horizons. There is a bit of explanatory power to monetary models such as the Dornbusch "overshooting" theory, in the form of reaction to...

We develop an analytically tractable two-country model that marries a full account of global macroeconomic dynamics to a supply framework based on monopolistic competition and sticky nominal prices. The model offers simple and intuitive predictions about exchange rates and current accounts that...