This paper investigates the main sources of instability in Brazil during the currency and financial distress episode of 2002. We test for financial contagion from the Argentine crisis and the impact of factors including IMF intervention and political uncertainty in raising the probability of...

The purpose of this paper is to put the future of the US dollar into a logical framework which comprises the global development mechanism. Two models of growth collide: the US «locomotive», based on the international use of the dollar, and which requires exogenous pushes coming permanently...

The interwar period was marked by the end of the classical gold standard regime and new levels of macroeconomic disorder in the world economy. The interwar disorder often is linked to policies inconsistent with the constraint of the open-economy trilemmathe inability of policymakers...

This paper investigates possible contribution of third-currency effects to exchange rate movements. It reopens the subject of currency substitution and examines whether the third-currency effects change when the third-currency is a complement as opposed to when it is a substitute for currencies...

This paper investigates effects of third-currency monetary policy shocks on exchange rates. For this purpose we setup a structural VAR model containing the exchange rates of the three major currencies – the U.S. dollar, the euro and the Japanese yen – and short-term interest rates on the...

One of the goals of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt initiative is to provide additional resources for basic health care to the population of eligible developing countries. In this paper I investigate the effect of debt relief on per capita health expenditure in a sample of...

We investigate how the exchange rate regime influences economic linkages across countries. We divide the exchange rate regime into three classifications: currency union, peg and floating exchange rates. Unlike most studies solely focusing on the relationship between anchor and client countries,...

The exchange-rate regime is often seen as constrained by the monetary policy trilemma, which imposes a stark tradeoff among exchange stability, monetary independence, and capital market openness. Yet the trilemma has not gone without challenge. Some (e.g., Calvo and Reinhart 2001, 2002) argue...

The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, I investigate whether numerous debt initiatives during the 1980s and 1990s have had a significant effect on economic growth rates in developing countries in general. The major initiatives during that time period were negotiated as bilateral agreements...

This paper shows that many East Asian firms are significantly exposed to foreign exchange risk. Their exposure appears to be much more widespread than is typical for the large, western industrialized economies. The paper also shows that exchange rate pegs appear to do little to alleviate this...