This paper focuses on the portfolio-balance model as a framework for addressing several unresolved issues about the behavior of exchange rates. A major objective is to contribute to an understanding of the relative importance of the different channels through which current account imbalances may...

The paper models an adjustable peg exchange rate arrangement as a policy rule with an escape clause under which the timing and magnitudes of realignments are the outcomes of policy optimization decisions. Under the assumptions that market participants are rational, risk averse, and fully...

The merits of rules and discretion for monetary policy are considered when the structure of the macroeconomic model and the probability distributions of disturbances are not well defined. When it is costly to delay policy reactions to seldom-experienced shocks until formal algorithmic learning...

Although existing models of systematic exchange rate behavior perform little or no better than random-walk models in out-of-sample forecasting tests based on realized values of explanatory variables, this paper finds scope for some optimism that the empirical modeling of exchange rates will...

It has been argued that "buy-backs" and "debt-equity swaps" allow developing countries to benefit from market discounts on their external debt. It is argued here, however, that if such programs are expected to be successful in increasing the market value of remaining debt, they also lead to a...

Buy-backs of external debt that are financed by the debtor through asset sales generally result in unchanged or lower market prices for remaining debt. The contractual value of debt is reduced by some multiple of the market value of assets sold. The use of assets as collateral for new debt that...

This paper tests alternative assumptions concerning the time-series behavior of foreign exchange rates. Data for about 20,000 individual trades on foreign exchange options for dollar exchange rates against six major currencies carried out from February 1983 to June 1985 are analyzed. The tests...

Empirical tests incorporating measures of capital flight from developing countries that are substantially different from those used in existing studies suggest that capital flight can be explained by differences in risk perceived by residents and nonresidents in holding claims on residents of...