We study the history of terms-of-trade booms (during 1970–2012), with a focus on Latin America, through the prisms of a simple metric that quantifies the associated income windfall. We also document saving patterns during these episodes and propose a measure of how much of the income windfall...

Commodity-exporting countries have significantly benefited from the commodity price boom of recent years. At the current juncture, however, uncertain global economic prospects have raised questions about their vulnerability to a sharp fall in commodity prices and the policies that can shield it...

When analyzing terms-of-trade shocks, it is implicitly assumed that the economy responds symmetrically to changes in export and import prices. Using a sample of developing countries our paper shows that this is not the case. We construct export and import price indices using commodity and...

This paper contributes to the literature by looking at the possible relevance of the structure of the financial system-whether financial intermediation is performed through banks or markets-for macroeconomic volatility, against the backdrop of increased policy attention on strengthening growth...

The relationship between international payments and the real exchange rate—the “transfer problem” is a classic question in international economics. We use new data on countries’ net external positions together with real exchange rate data to shed light on this question. We present a...

Is the relationship between the current account balance and the terms of trade affected by the persistence of terms of trade shocks? In intertemporal models of the current account that incorporate a consumption-smoothing and an investment response to shocks, the effect of the terms of trade on...