Monetary assets have different characteristics which make them more or less useful in facilitating transactions. Academic economists have consistently argued that these differences should be incorporated in monetary aggregates by assigning assets different weights. However, central banks...

This paper assesses the implications of Chinese capital account liberalization for capital flows. Stylized facts from capital account liberalization in advanced and large emerging market economies illustrate that capital account liberalization has historically generated large gross capital in-...

Central banks in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) have been modernizing their monetary policy frameworks, often moving toward inflation targeting (IT). However, questions regarding the strength of monetary policy transmission from interest rates to inflation and output have often...

Policymakers often express concern that herding by financial market participants destabilizes markets and increases the fragility of the financial system. This paper provides an overview of the recent theoretical and empirical research on herd behavior in financial markets. It addresses the...

This paper investigates the factors determining the impact of exchange rate regimes on the behavior of domestic investment and foreign direct investment (FDI). Producers may diversify internationally in order to increase the flexibility of production. We characterize the possible equilibria in a...

This paper discusses five indicators of competitiveness: real exchange rates based on consumer price indices, export unit values of manufacturing goods, the relative price of traded to nontraded goods, normalized unit labor costs in manufacturing, and the ratio of normalized unit labor costs to...

This paper is the first attempt to look at inflation dynamics and monetary transmission mechanisms in Armenia in the context of a full information model containing three interrelated markets: foreign exchange, money, and labor. Using the vector error correction model (VECM) approach, we find...

The recent experience of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has stimulated the debate over currency union and reinforced the incentive for the emergence of currency blocs in other regions of the world. This paper builds a dynamic stochastic model - based on network externalities...

This paper examines the transmission of changes in the U.S. monetary policy to local-currency sovereign bond yields of Brazil and Mexico. Using vector error-correction models, we find that the U.S. 10-year bond yield was a key driver of long-term yields in these countries, and that Brazilian...

This paper presents a comprehensive database of country-specific commodity price indices for 182 economies covering the period 1962-2018. For each country, the change in the international price of up to 45 individual commodities is weighted using commodity-level trade data. The database includes...