Before the 1997-98 crisis, the East Asian economies - except for Japan - informally pegged their currencies to the dollar. These soft pegs made them vulnerable to a depreciating yen, thereby aggravating the crisis. To limit future misalignments, the IMF wants East Asian currencies to float...

In 2005, the Bank of Russia has made three announcements that indicate an increasing role for the euro in the Russian exchange rate strategy. On February 4 2005 the Bank of Russia announced that it has started to stabilize the daily volatilities of the Russian ruble against a dollar- euro...

This paper explores the conflict of real and monetary convergence during the EMU run-up of the Central and Eastern European new EU member states. Based on a Balassa-Samuelson model of productivity driven inflation, it finds a high probability of higher inflation in the new member states. It...

The IMF classifications of the Central and Eastern European exchange rate arrangements are heterogeneous. While one group of countries reports tight pegs to the euro, a second group seems to have moved toward (more) exchange rate flexibility. Based on the recent discussion about the accuracy of...

Although most CIS and East Asian countries are de jure classified as free floaters, they de facto pursue (tight) dollar pegs. This paper emphasizes dollar denomination of short-term and long-term payment flows as reasons for exchange rate stabilization. Based on the analysis of ifcompetitive...

We study the impact of Japanese foreign exchange intervention on the volatility of the yen/dollar exchange rate since the early 1990s based on a GARCH framework. Using daily intervention data provided by the Japanese Ministry of Finance, we show that the success of interventions varies over...

During the 1990’s the Japanese yen proved astonishingly strong despite the persisting recession. This paper tracks the origins of the high yen. It analyses the influence of interest rates, prices and foreign exchange policy on the yen-dollar exchange rate. It comes to the conclusion that real...

This paper studies the role of the yen/dollar exchange rate in the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy reaction function. In contrast to prior estimations of reaction functions based on the Taylor-rule, we allow for regime shifts by estimating rolling coefficients from January 1974 to March 1999....

The paper analyses the causality between the Japanese-US relative export prices and the yen-dollar exchange rate. It explains why the Japanese yen proved strong even during the economic slump of the 1990s. The paper suggests that the appreciation of the Japanese yen forced the Japanese...

In this paper, we examine the rationale for dollar and euro pegging in Russia and the CIS. We consider macroeconomic stabilization and transaction costs for international trade as rationales for pegging to the euro. Dollarization of international assets and liabilities are examined as...