What is the extent of currency diversification in the international monetary system? How hasit evolved over time? In this paper, we quantify the degree of currency diversification usingregression methods of currency co-movements to determine the extent to which nationalcurrencies across the...

This paper empirically investigates international and domestic monetary policy transmission mechanisms in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). We assess interest rate pass-through of both the U.S. policy rate and the ECCU minimum saving deposit rate (MSR) into domestic interest rates...

Chile offers an example of a country that has overcome the fear of floating by reducing balance sheet mismatches, enhancing financial market development, as well as improving monetary, fiscal, and political institutions, and strengthening policy credibility. Under the floating regime, Chile's...

This paper evaluates the role of trade and financial linkages in the decision to enter a monetary union. We estimate a two-country DSGE model for the U.K. economy and the euro area, and use the model to compute the welfare trade-offs from joining the euro. We evaluate two alternative scenarios....

This paper proposes a quantitative assessment of the welfare effects arising from the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and an array of broader grouping among Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Model simulations suggest that (i) participating in the CMA benefits all members; (ii)...

Theoretical models on the relationship between prices and exchange rates predict that the magnitude of expenditure switching affects the optimal choice of exchange rate regime. Focusing on the transmission of terms-of-trade shocks to domestic real variables we document that the magnitude of the...

Milton Friedman argued that flexible exchange rates would facilitate external adjustment. Recent studies find surprisingly little robust evidence that they do. We argue that this is because they use composite (or aggregate) exchange rate regime classifications, which often mask very...

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and nowhere is this truer than in the arena of international economic policy cooperation. With the world facing the largest and most synchronized plunge in output of the postwar era, policy makers banded together to find solutions. This paper looks at the...

Bolivia has achieved noteworthy success over the past 15 years in raising incomes, reducing poverty, and maintaining macroeconomic stability by deploying commodity revenues to finance transfers, public investment, and state-led development, using an exchange rate peg as a policy anchor. However,...

Real exchange rates exhibit important low-frequency fluctuations. This makes the analysis of real exchange rates at all frequencies a more sound exercise than the typical business cycle one, which compares actual and simulated data after the Hodrick-Prescott filter is applied to both. A simple...